JSA Submission Guidelines

Journal for the Study of Antisemitism (JSA) is the peer-reviewedperiodical of independent scholars who examine antisemitism intraditional and emerging forms. The Journal is not affiliated with anyparticular institution or dependent on a single source of funding. Theauthors have in common the belief that antisemitism is a social, politicaland psychological virus worthy of scholarly investigation. Hoping forthe day when their efforts will contain the virus, they apply Spinosa'sdictum vowing not to execrate human actions, but to understand them.JSA is an educationally based concern with tax exempt status 501(c)(3)The ideas represented in the JSA are those of the contributing authors,and not reflective of the JSA, its Board members, or the authorsinstitution. JSA welcomes unsolicited manuscripts.E-mail submissions should be original, and electronic copy in MS Wordformat. Citations Chicago Manual of Style format.All electronic journal submissions: skbaum1@gmail.com orjsantisemitism@gmail.com.ISSN on File

Ddie la mmoire des victims de la France de

l'antismitisme et ceux qui luttent contre ce flau.

Hlne Berr, diarist

Paris, 1944

*Yids to the oven.

Jewish school graffiti*

Marseille, 2014

This issue was made possible by a grant funded by V&L and our readership

A Return to the Antisemitism-Terrorism Nexus

Shimon T. Samuels*I had been invited in March 1980 to open the Europeanoffice in Paris of the Anti-Defamation League of Bnai Brith. Atthat time, the greatest threat to the Jews of Western Europeappeared to come from an increas- ingly violent extreme right.On October 3, Erev Succoth, I was delivering festivegreetings at the home of Paris Maariv correspondent TamarGolan. Her weekend houseguest, Alizawife of prominentJerusalem film-maker Micha Shagrirhad just arrived fromIsrael. Asking Tamar if she needed anything for dinner, the latterreplied: Perhaps a few figs. Aliza and I took the lift down to thestreet and walked together to the corner. I continued to my carand Aliza toward the fruit shop opposite the synagogue on the rueCopernic. A few seconds later, she met her death!The following morning, Prime Minister Raymond Barrepublicly announced: A bomb set for Jews killed four innocentFrenchmen! In fact, one was a Chinese waiter, another aPortuguese postman, third was Aliza, fourth an innocentFrenchman. Forty-two worshippers were wounded inside thesynagogue. The motorbike bomb outside exploded at 6:38 p.m.;thirty minutes later would have resulted in a massacre as over twohundred congregants exited at the end of the service. PresidentGiscard dEstaing, who refused to return to Paris from a huntingweekend, was to lament in May 1981: I lost my reelection atCopernic.The 1980 synagogue bombing launched two years ofviolence that I was to denote the antisemitism-terrorism nexus,compiling a list of 73 shootings and bombings of Jewish targetsacross Western Europe, of which 29 had occurred in France. Itbegan with four dead at Copernic and ended with nine dead in therue des Rosiers, machine-gunned down as they walked throughthe Jewish quarter in August 1982.The shooting and bombing stopped as a byproduct of Israelsmilitary incursion into southern Lebanon to curb a wave of PLOterrorism. Euro- pean, Latin American, and Asian terrorists at

PLO training bases in the line of fire fled home. Once repatriated,they used their expertise against banks, embassies, and othertargets; Jews were no longer their priority victims. Governmentsnow cracked down. The French national security alert systemVigipirate crushed extreme-left Action Directed, as was the fateof their German Bader-Meinhof/RAF and Italian Red Brigadeideological allies. As Simon Wiesenthal would say: What startswith the Jews never ends with them!For over two decades, many believed that Copernic was thework of neo-Nazis, but French intelligence long knew it as thePalestinian transplan- tation of the Middle East conflict toEuropean soil and, in alliance with Europes extreme-left terrornetwork, a war on Jewish targets.In November 2010, while attending the Ottawa InterParliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism, I learned that inthe Federal Court a few blocks away, a French extradition requesthad opened against Carleton Uni- versity sociology professorHassan Diab, identified as a former PFLP asso- ciate and primesuspect in the Copernic bombing. The courtroom was filledmostly with men wearing Palestinian keffiyeh scarfs and womenin hijab veils, who, through a Hassan Diab solidarity campaign,were intent on turn- ing a simple extradition procedure into a trialagainst the State of Israel. Three and a half years later, despite thejudges favorable decision to extra- dite Diab for trial in Paris, theCanadian authorities have yet to do so, thereby denying theCopernic victims and their families a much-delayed closure.Flash forward thirty-four years from Copernic, we onceagain confront an antisemitism-terrorism nexus. Due todemographics, however, this is no longer a Middle East importbut a home-grown anti-Jewish hatred.When the several thousand young European-born Muslimyouth, recruited to Jihad in Syria or in training camps in Pakistan,return home, Western Europe will, again, learn that what startedwith the Jews never ends with them!As chair of the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism, I feltthat much significant work by non-English-speaking scholars andsocial activists was lost to the field. The JSA has done much togrant a podium to such voices. I was honored to edit a specialLatin-American edition for those that could read only in Spanishor Portuguese. On this occasion, the contributors arepredominantly Francophone.Pierre-Andre Taguieff is a highly respected researcherprolifically pub- lished on Holocaust denial, anti-Zionism, and,above all, renowned for his voluminous work on the Protocols ofthe Elders of Zion. Micheline Servin contributes regularly to theprestigious journal Les Temps Modernes and here presents thefirst part of her study on anti-Israeli influence at the Avi- gnonFestival. Didier Bertin is a prominent French Protestant leaderwho was codefendant with me in a case of criminal libel brought

against us by a Franco-Palestinian support organization. Such

attempts at intimidation were, as witnessed here, happilyunsuccessful. Sammy Ghozlan was a for- mer police detectiveand bandleader when we met in the 2000 tsunami of the SecondIntifada blowback against Jewish life in France. Government,police, and the official community were in denial. The WiesenthalCenter immediately partnered with Sammy to create the BNVCA(the National Bureau Against Antisemitism) as a voice for thevictims of Islamist attack. BNVCA today is the major juridicalarm against increasing BDS cam- paigns. Mark Knobel, myassistant for over a decade, is now an official of the CRIF, anumbrella lobby of French Jewry. Knobels latest publicationfocuses on current Jihadist incitement and violence. PhilippeKarsenty is the indefatigable champion of truth in media, knownespecially for his cam- paign against French television to exposethe Muhommed Al-Durrah affair; this became an Arab-worldblood libel against the Israel Defense Forces.The study of French antisemitism cannot be completewithout an understanding of the Dreyfus case. Whether itsinfluence on Theodore Herzls vision and passion for a Jewishsovereign solution, or the honor and courage of an Emile Zola, oras an antecedent to the crimes of Vichy, Drey- fus is here treatedby eminent Francophile expert Robert Wistrich, and MichelGurfinkiel contributes his excellent reporting on French politics.As home to Western Europes largest Jewish and Muslimcommuni- ties, France has become a touchstone for ourelucidation of what has become known as the new antisemitism.May this special edition of the JSA contribute to that awarenessand presage well for our Journal.Shimon T. Samuels, ChairJournal for the Study of AntisemitismParis

From the Editor . . .

There is no antisemitism in Franceand moreover, there are no antisemites in France--Jacques Chirac,Prime Minister and President of France

When Prime Minister Jacques Chirac made the 2002 statement that"there is no antisemitism in France," he was in keeping with a long-standingtradition of politicians extolling the virtues of libert, galit fraternit andclosing their eyes to French antisemitic discrimination and hate crimes. Mr.Chirac's denial of French antisemitism is juxtaposed to police reports for thesame time period of Jan-April 2002, the period of time preceding his statement.La Courneuve, Seine St Denis 1/25/02 A Jewish school bus is attacked byyouths. Avignon 1/30/02 Graffiti and swastikas are painted on a synagogue.Toulouse 3/31/02 Two gunshots are fired into a kosher butcher shop. Lyon3/31/02 A Jewish couple is attacked in a suburb. Paris 4/2/02 Antisemiticgraffiti is found on Otzar HaTorah synagogue. Paris 4/3/02 Stones are thrownat worshippers at the pinay Sous Senart synagogue. Paris 4/9/02 Asynagogue is set on fire in Garges-les-Gonesses. Paris 4/10/02 A school bus ispelted with stones as students were boarding. Strasbourg 4/12/02 Jewishcemetery is vandalized in suburban Cronenbourg. Paris 4/12/02 A Molotovcocktail is thrown into a Jewish family apartment. Paris 4/28/02 Jewish dayschool is set on fire in Sarcelles. . .

As well Mr. Chirac may have covered his ears when his ambassadorDaniel Bernard made a faux paus. Perhaps taking on de Gaulle's concerns of an"elite people sure of themselves and domineering" once assembled viastatehood, would inevitably show off their "burning and conquering ambition."Covering both eyes and covering both ears to his host's religious andethnic background, London journalist Barbara Amiel documented herexperience with Ambassador Bernard"[he] politely told a gathering at my home that the currenttroubles in the worldwere all because of that shitty little countryIsrael."In all fairness to Mr. Chirac who was first French head of state toapologize for Vel-d'Hiv (police roundup of 13,152 Paris Jews), even theexperts could not have predicted the meteoric rise in antisemitic attacks for2012--a crescendo that would continue for the next few years with moreattacks, Charlie Hebdo assassinations and summer pogroms.

This is a full issue dedicated to those of the Republic who fight the goodfight. We start with American in Paris expat and writer Nidra Poller and hertrenchant analyisis the French Intifada. Moving quickly into the unprecedentednumber of antisemitic events via Marc Knobel (the details of each event are toonumerous to list and appear on the website www.jsantisemitism.org). PierreAndr Taguieff weighs in on the culture of haine that pervades Jewish life for thesame time period and Phillippe Karsenty explains the story behind the story ofMohammed al-Durah's well publicized death--aptly subtitled for Ms Poller's bookof the same as Long range ballistic myth. Micheline Servin offers a glimpse intohow the new antisemitism pervades the theatre performances at Avignon. Topcop Sammy Gohzlan essay was written just before he announced that he leavingfor Israel--joining 5,000 of his fellow French Juifs in their annual departure forsafer lands. In the end, historian Robert Wistrich predicted, Jews will leaveFrance and he was right. Perhaps it is his masterful command of the DreyfusAffair in this section that permits and understanding that with antisemitism, pastis prologue. British psychologist Rusi Jaspal then shares his Iranian anti-Zionismfindings by examining original newspaper articles. His ideas dovetail withsociologist Michel Gurfinkiel hard look at French antisemitism.

Retaliatory satire at its finest.

--L'Audace (Tunis, 1/29/15)

The impact of Charlie Hebdo continues to reverberate and the

remainding essays try to close the chapter though new chapters seem to beopened perpetually. While the Western world mourned the assault on freedomand loss of life, newspapers in Tunis were busy showing that when it came tosatire, they were second to none. After the Charlie Hebdo assasinations, the coverof the next issue depicted the Prophet and the unprecedented empathy of buttonsand signs that read "I am Charlie." Not to be undone, Muslim news satiristspointed up the West's hypocrisy and produced the equivent --a cartoon of anorthodox Jew holding a sign that reads "I am Gaza."Reviews of Goldhagen's work by Alex Traum, Romirowski and Joffe onPalestinian Refugee politics (Jonathan Adelman) BDS by Baum, Abe Foxman'sinternet concerns by Andre Oboler, the Catholic Church by Peter Katel, SaloAisenberg's Hate Mail (Simon Cohen) and Simon Mayers concern for thecurmudgeon Chesterton (Carolyn Sanzenbacher) round some of the key readingsfor the year. Film reviews of Perival's The Book Thief are followed by the collegeconspiracy circuit viz., Robbins Some of My Best Friends are Zionists andPignede's Oligarchy and Zionism. Not to be undone with the nonsensicle, theAntisemitica section concludes with tongue in cheek collections and a tribute toCharley Hebdo.As with Rusi Jaspal, Veronique Altglas has argued that "it is these

polarized representations of the social world, opposing imaginary Jewish

oppressors to their victims that grants antisemitism its extraordinary efficacy inmobilizing such a variety of organizations and individuals."1 The larger questionis how to make it stop.Steven K. BaumAlbuquerque, NM1

Countdown to ConflagrationJan. 26, 2014: Video footage captures anti-government protestors shouting Juif, laFrance nest pas a toiJew, France is not yours in Paris.[ March 2, 2014: A Jewish man is beaten on the Paris Metro by assailants whoreportedly told him Jew, we are going to lay into you, you have no country" March 10, 2014: An Israeli man is attacked with a stun gun in the Marais district March 20, 2014: A Jewish teacher is attacked leaving a kosher restaurant in Paris.After breaking his nose, the assailants drew a swastika on his chest.[2 May 9, 2014: A number of antisemitic scrawlings were found across the Alsace regionin eastern France. Stars of David and the words Juden Raus were written ona car near the synagogue in Saint-Louis in southern Alsace. Other antisemiticgraffiti was discovered in nearby Huninge as well as in Village-Neuf, both closeto the German and Swiss borders. May 15, 2014: A Jewish woman was attacked at a bus stop in Paris Montmartredistrict by a man who shook her baby carriage and said, Dirty Jewess, enoughwith your children already, you Jews have too many children, screw you.[ May 16, 2014: A dozen inscriptions were found in Toulouse including: "SS", "Hitlerburned 6 million Jews and forgot half" and "Long live Palestine". May 25, 2014: Two Jewish brothers who were dressed in traditional Jewish clothingwere attacked near a synagogue in Creteil. One of them suffered severe injuriesto his eye. They were attacked by two men who were armed with brass knuckle. June 9, 2014: Two Jewish teenagers and their grandfather are chased by an axwielding man and three accomplices as they walk to their synagogue in the Parissuburb of Romainville. June 10, 2014: A Jewish teen wearing a yarmulke is attacked with a Taser by group ofteens at Paris Place de la Republique Jewish teens wearing yarmulkes aresprayed with tear gas (Sarcelles) July 2014, dozens of young men protesting Israels actions in Gaza (following Israelimilitary move into Gaza briefly besieged Don Isaac Abravanel Synagogue inParis and clashed with security Accroding to Serge Benham, the president ofthe Don Isaac Abravanel Synagogue, no one inside the building itself wasattacked.[ July 14, 2014: Bastile celebrations in Paris turn violent. Anti-Israel rioters attack thel Don Isaac Aravanell synagogue. July 20, 2014: Sarcelles anti-Semitic rioting. In November a 27-year-old man wasconvicted of arson for having deliberately set fire to a kosher grocery store.[ Sept. 2, 2014: Two French teenage girls are arrested for plotting to blow up asynagogue in Lyon. A Central Directorate of Homeland Intelligence source saidthe teens were part of a network of young Islamists who were being monitoredby security services.[ Nov. 12, 2014: A kosher sushi restaurant in Paris is firebombed.[ December 2, 2014: "A Jewish woman was raped in an apparent anti-Semitic attack inCrteil, a commune in the southeastern suburbs of Paris," according to YnetnewsThe rapist told the woman that he was raping her "because you are Jewish."

France 2015JANUARYParis 1/7/15 Four Jewish hostages are murdered in cold blood at kosher supermarket inParis. Political satire newspaper Charlie Hebdo staff is massacred. Undeterred by the

January 7 attack, the surviving staff go to press distributing 3 million copies of

the next edition. Its cover depicting a tearful Prophet carrying the popular protestsign "Je suis Charlie." Over the Prophet's head are the words "all is forgiven."Within hours, death threats were received at the newspaper. Within days, protestsin Pakistan netted two injured journalists, one police officer and a French pressphotographer shot. Khartoum protesters demanded expulsion of Frenchambassador. Afghanistan's president calls the Prophet issue magazine coverblasphemous and caricature "barbaric," Niger news reported that "at least ten"[Christians] were killed. Iran retaliates by banning one of the few free pressnewspapers.St-Sauveur 1/31/15 Nancy Antisemitic graffiti have been sprayed on the walls of aprivate Catholic school in Nancy.FEBRUARY

MARCH

APRILMAYJUNE

Antisemitic Incidents from Around the World

JanJune 2015A Selected List

Charb (1967- 2015)

Laugh, For God's Sake

Paint a glorious Muhammad, you die.Draw a funny Muhammad, you die.Scribble an ignoble Muhammad, you die.Make a crappy film about Muhammad, you die.Resist against the religious terror, you die.Lick the fundamentalists' ass, you die.Take an obscurantist for an idiot, you die.Try to debate an obscurantist, you die.There is nothing to negotiate with the fascists.The liberty to laugh without any reserve has been given to us already by law,the systematic violence of the extremists gives it to us, too.Thank you, you assholes.

A French IntifadaNidra Poller*A process described by some as the Islamization of Europe, by others asthe failure of Europeans to integrate Muslim immigrants, has reached a breakingpoint in France. One of the most troubling manifestations of this discord is thedevelopment of a particular type of violence that is more than the sum of its parts.A sampling of this year's news reports reads like a catalogue of stomping,stabbing, shooting, torching, and sacking; attacks on teachers, policemen,firemen, old ladies, and modest retirees; turf wars, tribal fights, murder overwomen, over attitude, over nothing; dead youths, murderous youths, bodiesscattered across a national battlefield.Is there a connection between the endless series of seemingly disparatecriminal incidents and markers openly displayed in insurrectional riots anddemonstrationskaffiyeh face masks, Hezbollah flags, intifada slogans, Islamicchants? A general French tendency to withhold information and a deliberatedecision to avoid ethnic and religious symbols leads to white noise coverage ofcriminality. Names, photos, and background information about perpetrators,suspects, and victims are usually suppressed, especially those that might create anegative image of Muslims.Yet there is ample evidence that immigration has brought specificallyIslamic antipathy to Jews, contempt for Western values, and other antisocialattitudes reinforced by religious zeal and aggravated by the clash between anauthoritarian family structure and permissive French society. Many second andthird generation, French-born Muslims, anxious to separate themselves from a"French" identity they reject, are no less vulnerable to these influences thanrecent immigrants.A supposedly reassuring "it's not Chicago" occasionally tacked on at theend of a report about a lawless neighborhood adds to the confusion. In fact, it isnot Chicago but more like Algiers, Jenin, or Bamako.Gaza on the Seine"We don't want to import the Mideast conflict." These soothing wordswere repeated by officials from Left to Right every time Muslim rage oversupposed Zionist persecution of Palestinians was "avenged" by violence againstJews in France, notably the countless attacks against Jews tallied since theoutbreak in September 2000 of the "al-Aqsa intifada." Initially dismissed as"insults and bullying," the worst wave of anti-Jewish aggression since World WarII was subsequently attributed to the quirky import of a "foreign bug" thattroubled harmonious relations between local Jewish and Muslim communities.Meanwhile, the media were importing the conflict with all their might, proPalestinian nongovernmental organizations were agitating, and peace marches

against the Iraq war blossomed into punitive actions against Jews.Though ethnic and religious statistics are prohibited in France, it isestimated to have the largest populations of Muslims, anywhere from five to tenmillion, and Jews, around 550,000, in Western Europe. Over half of the Jewishpopulation is Sephardic, mainly refugees from North Africa. The Muslimpopulation, most of which arrived since the early 1970s, is primarily from theMaghreb and sub-Saharan Africa with large contingents from Turkey, smallercommunities from the rest of the Muslim world, and a growing number ofconverts.The ethnic or religious identities and underlying motives of individualswho attack Jews in France are no more mysterious than those of jihadists whostrike elsewhere, from the smooth World Trade Center terrorists to the bunglingTimes Square bomber, and tens of thousands of the same stripe. A FrenchMuslim thug does not bash the head of a French Jew because he cannot vent hisrage against an Israeli: His feet, fists, iron bar, and knife, in fact, slash the falsedistinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.In May 2004, tens of thousands of mostly Jewish marchers protestingterrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and assaults on Jews in France chanted"Synagogues brles, Rpublique en danger [torched synagogues, endangeredrepublic]."[1] Today, when the situation of French Jews has jelled into an uneasytrucewith a slow but steady decrease in population, sustained immigration toIsrael, and avoidance when possible of heavily Muslim neighborhoodstheFrench republic is in danger as the anti-Jewish thuggery has been extended to thegeneral population, the "dirty Frenchies" and "filthy whities."France's politique arabe (pro-Arab policy) has been unwittingly transposed to thedomestic scene.The twisted logic and adulterated ethics devised to blame Israel forfailing to bring peace on earth has come back to haunt the French. Acompassionate discourse that excuses Palestinian atrocities against Israelicivilians as a reaction to "injustice" also excuses French domestic criminality aspayback for colonization, discrimination, exclusion, unemployment, and policeharassment. Confusion between avowed genocidal intentions and elusivelegitimate aspirationsa Palestinian state living side by side in peace withIsraelbreeds confusion at home between insurrectional thugs and frustrated butlaw-abiding immigrants. The "disproportionate reaction" accusation played likethe ace of spades against Israel turns into a joker when riot police are portrayedas Robocops oppressing a "Palestinized" immigrant population. Havingexpropriated the moral high ground by rough riding over the heads of Israelisoldiers, French authorities are disarmed in confrontations with homegrownshabab or youths.So Palestinian terrorists are called "militants," Gaza Flotilla jihadists arepresented as "humanitarians," and the young French criminals are "youths." Thisdeceivingly generic term used to mask the identity of local Maghrebi and Africanthugs is a paradoxical translation of the Arabic shabab. Indeed, it is not rare toread of a "36-year-old adult youth" involved in a rumble or suspected of murder.Have French youngsters become savages? Do they steal handbags fromelderly women and kill a man who will not give them a cigarette? Are these thesame youths who join peace marches, live ecologically, hate religion, andworship diversity? Are French youth running the drug traffic while studying forthe baccalaureate exam? Do they break into schools to kill rival dealers or stab

uppity teachers? Are the French youth who sit in cafes with their iPhones andsunbathe naked on beaches the same ones that gang up twenty to one on a manwho looked twice at their girlfriends or complained when cut in front of in line atan amusement park? What about the youthful French boy couples strolling handin hand on rue (street) Ste. Croix de la Bretonnerie in the Marais? Do they meetrivals for knife fights at Paris's north station? Hardly.During the 2005 uprising, when rioting Muslim youths torched cars andpublic buildings in housing projects throughout the country and clashed with thesecurity forces trying to restore law and order, Parisians believed they were safeinside invisible walls as fires burned on the other side of the ring road. "It's justthe banlieue [working class suburb]," they said. A second round of discourseabout the urgent need to improve housing, infrastructure, transportation, and jobopportunities circumscribed the problem. Before the year was out, flames wererising in the center of the city and the banlieue problems spread like wildfire.[2]Naked Eye and Media EyesFive years later, as France is being rocked by another, if more diffuse andelusive, wave of violence, the discourse is similarly sterile. Newspapers string outa litany of violent incidents in a repetition of stock phrases and opaquevocabulary. Honey-voiced newscasters warble little tunes of tribal violence as ifturf wars and fatal stabbings in retaliation for a look, an attitude, or a womanwere all in a day's work. Bucolic place names redolent with memories ofImpressionist boating parties are now the sites of bloody murder. Fatal stabbingsin schools named after resistance heroes are attributed to the influence of videogames and a hunger for consumer products stimulated by capitalism. A smallsample paints the grim picture:January 14, 2010: Adrien, an 18-year-old from Sannois (Val d'Oise) is savagelymurdered by a gang of youths armed with sticks, knives, golf clubs, and aJapanese saber. He tried to find refuge in a car repair shop, but themanager, who was ordered out, stood by helplessly as the youths beatand stabbed Adrien to death. Subsequent reports reveal that the murderwas the last act in a day of fights between two groups. The victim'sdistraught mother berates the youths for making trouble and giving theneighborhood a bad name, yet blames their aggression on policeharassment.[3]January 23: A "26-year-old young man" stabbed to death is found in the street inthe Orgemont project at Epinay-sur-Seine (Seine Saint-Denis). A suspectturned himself in, yet the circumstances have not been elucidated. Thatsame day, four people are wounded by BB guns, in a fight in Tremblayen France (Seine Saint-Denis), again without elucidation.[4] And a 16year-old girl in Saint Gratien (Val d'Oise) is severely beaten by her twobrothers and strict Muslim parents for chatting on the Internet; doctorsfear she will lose an eye.[5]January 31: A gang fight involving a hundred youths, some armed with knives,takes place in the Boissy-Saint-Lger RER commuter train station,apparently connected to a hip-hop concert.[6]February 6: A 17-year-old youth is stabbed to death near the Parc des Princesstadium in the sixteenth arrondissement of Paris.[7]February 7: Youths fight the police for two hours in Chanteloup-les-Vignes

(Yvelines). The next day, two men "of African origin," probablygangsters, are shot in the ninth arrondissement of Paris, and on February20, a man is shot dead in broad daylight on rue des Pyrnes in thetwentieth arrondissement.[8]February 21: In Conteville (Seine-Maritime), a 73-year-old man visiting a friend,a retired scrap iron dealer, is killed by robbers who broke into thehome.[9]What happened next? Were the circumstances elucidated? Theperpetrators apprehended? Convicted? We may never know. Convinced that theidentity of culprits is withheld for ideological reasons, readers do the detectivework with telltale clues and exasperating similarities. Youths, knives, thebanlieue? Twenty against one? Drug wars? Turf wars? Gang fights? The puzzledcitizen situates each incident somewhere on a line traced from the intimidatingrowdiness observed in public to mass revolts seen on television: February 28: An African widow beloved by her neighbors is stabbed to deathin a bank to the horror of helpless customers and personnel. The nextday, a retired couple aged 76, are brutally murdered in their home inPont-Saint-Maxence (Oise), just north of Paris.[10] March 1: A sixteen-year-old boy drowns in the Yerres river at VilleneuveSaint-Georges (Val de Marne) trying to escape assailants who chasedhim as he came out of a hospital after treatment for injuries sustained inan earlier episode.[11] March 10: Four masked youths armed with knives and a fake gun sneakthrough the handicapped entrance into an amphitheater at the Universityof Paris XIII-Villetaneuse (Seine Saint-Denis) and steal a total of ninecell phones and 40 from the students and professor.[12] April 3: Fifteen youths are kicked off the tramway in the center of Grenoble.Three young men and a woman get off at the same stop. The youthsharass them, ask the woman for a cigarette; she says she does not haveany more. They knock over one of the young men, stomp his head, bashhim senseless, stab him, perforating his lung, and run, leaving the victim,a 24-year-old cartographer identified as Martin, hovering between lifeand death.[13] April 30: A man wearing a yarmulke was attacked in the center of Strasbourgby two Muslims who knocked him down with a heavy iron bar andstabbed him twice in the back.[14] July 14, Nantes: A 52-year-old handicapped man is beaten to death by four"African type" youths scrounging for cigarettes and a few euros. Thepolice are looking for witnesses.[15] August 4: A 64-year-old man was kidnapped by three youths in front of hishouse, forced into a car, taken to a secluded place, beaten, and tortureduntil he told them where he hid his savingsa few thousand euros. Thevictim was hospitalized in serious condition, his face slashed, a piece of afinger chopped off.[16]Low Intensity WarfareWherever punk jihadists decide to stake out a territorya street corner, apark bench, a place in line, or a housing projectthey punish intruders with

merciless violence.A young couple living in the center of the southwestern city of Perpignan whodared to protest the ear-splitting noise of motorcycle rodeos under their windowsin the middle of the night almost paid with their lives. Fifteen youths shouting,"We're going to kill you," broke into their building, raced up the stairs, andpounded on their door with such force that the adjoining wall started to collapse.They scattered and ran when the police approached.[17]Youths from l'Essonne punished a family because one of the boys made a remarkwhen they pushed ahead of them in line at the Asterix theme park, thirtykilometers north of Paris. They called in reinforcements, caught up with thefamily in the parking lot, beat up the boys and hit their mother.[18]July 13, the eve of French Independence Day, is traditionally celebratedwith dancing in the streets. Youths shooting prohibited firecracker missilescaused at least forty-seven fires. A 63-year-old woman died when a missile, shotthrough an open window, set fire to her modest apartment. The second floor of anineteenth arrondissement fire station, hit by missiles, went up in flames aspeople danced on the ground floor.[19]A minor traffic accident on a highway outside Paris ended in bloodymurder because the victim, a young family man named Muhammad, asked thewoman responsible for the damage to sign an insurance declaration. "You tryingto act French?" she objected, before calling for help from friends from lesMureaux, a nearby project. The youths, identified in one article as "black,"arrived in force, shouting, "We're going to kill you in front of your mother," andproceeded to bash the man's head with unrestrained savagery, killing him on thespot, in front of his family, as promised. Two of the killers were identified byname and Senegalese origin on a Senegalese website.[20]Several weeks later, an American journalist investigating the problems ofminorities in French housing projects was assaulted by youths in les Mureaux.Described as a 50-year-old evangelical, he was taken to a nearby hospital,unconscious. He had been given a head bashing and robbed of equipment worthmore than $15,000. The circumstances have not yet been elucidated.[21]Echo ChamberIn a transposition of the Middle East peace process mentality, the failureof integration is blamed on France just as the failure to create a Palestinian stateis blamed on Israel. The Palestinian cause is forgiven for sixty years ofaggression; delinquent immigrants are acquitted of responsibility for theirantisocial behavior and self-destructive strategies. Hamas attacks Israel for yearson end; the Israel finally retaliates and gets its nose rubbed in the rubble; housingprojects are dilapidated by their own delinquent residents only to be displayed asproof of social injustice. International opinion looks the other way as Hamasimposes Shari'a law in Gaza; the media close their eyes as thugs impose their lawin the projects.Banlieue-Gaza-on-the-Seine for the domestic insurgents, Banlieue-Gazaopen-air-prison for the compassionate choir. No matter how much is done orgiven, it is never enough; no matter how wild the behavior, it is always explainedaway. Here, there, and everywhere, ethical boundaries are erased and logicsurrenders to magical thinking. When mothers offer their children to die asshahidsmartyred murderersthe very horror of their vengeance is held as a

measure of the degree of oppression they endure. In France, every form of

brutality, including the murder of Ilan Halimia young French Jew kidnappedby a banlieue gang in January 2006 and tortured to death over a period of threeweeks[22]is attributed to some form of "exclusion."[23] The unashamed antiSemitism of gang leader Youssouf Fofana, a rabid Muslim Jew hater, was used tomask the motives of some twenty gang members of varied origins whoparticipated in the crime. Lawyers for the defense organized press conferencesand wrote op-eds to deny banlieue anti-Semitism and portray their clients asmisguided underprivileged youths.The same reverse chronology that explained in the first week of the alAqsa intifada that Palestinians had gone from throwing stones to shooting gunsbecause Israeli forces overreacted to the initialjustified"revolt," nowexplains that banlieue youth have started shooting at the police with automaticweapons because law enforcement has gone quasi-military.Identification with the Palestinian "resistance" emboldens French-borndelinquents. Punk jihadists who drink alcohol, wear sweat suits, hardly ever setfoot in a mosque, and cannot read the Qur'an in classic Arabic establish theirdominion as if it were a waqf (religious endowment).No French outlet would touch the "Hamas on the Seine" report byphotojournalist Jean-Paul Ney, published by the French-language, Israel-basedMetula News Agency on May 31, 2010, describing enraged kaffiyeh-masked,pro-Palestinians chanting, "Zionist sellout media," "Jews to the ovens," "FkFrance," "Sarkozy the little Jew," "Obama the Jew's n___r," repeatedly breakingpolice lines, determined to reach the Israeli embassy and vent their rage over theGaza flotilla incident. Joined by anarchist "black-blocks," the insurgentsdestroyed property, threw paving stones at the police, and wreaked havoc forseveral hours at the Champs Elyses Circle. Ney distinctly heard orders broadcastto the riot police: "Don't try to stop them."[24]The Marseille Bondy Blog celebrated French Independence Day in its fashion byfeaturing a T-shirt emblazoned with an Algerian flag in the shape of Francespitting image of a map of Israel covered with a Palestinian flag. "Second or thirdgeneration immigrant youths from the Maghreb, Comores, etc.," says a youngwoman identified as Sonia, "are trying to find themselves." The T-shirt is theanswer to their quest. "We really have a double culture; we are both [French andAlgerian]."[25]French media automatically favor the other version of any clashinvolving Israel. Journalists can write with their eyes closed. Or simply swallowwhat they are fed from Agence France-Presse dispatches. The story of the clashin August 2010 on Israel's border with Lebanonwhen an Israeli officer, threeLebanese soldiers, and one Lebanese journalist were killed when Lebanese forcesopened fire on Israel Defense Forces soldiers performing routine maintenancework within Israelbroke in France, of course, with the Lebanese narrative. Thefalsification was revealed within twenty-four hours and confirmed in full reliabledetail,[26] but media alchemists turned the dirty facts into ambiguous gold.[27]Why believe Israeli sources, even when corroborated by U.N. troops on thescene?Hall of MirrorsGiven that the Muhammad al-Dura hoaxthe staged death scene and subsequentmartyrization of the 12-year-old Gazan allegedly killed in cold blood by Israeli

soldiers on the second day of the "Aqsa intifada"[28]was produced by Charles

Enderlin, long-time Jerusalem correspondent of the state-owned France 2television channel, the French authorities understandably live in dread of a realDura on their own soil, not least since the youths readily fabricate their own childmartyrs and go on the rampage in revenge. The 2005 riots were triggered by thedeath of two minors who sought refuge in an electrical substation, allegedlypursued by the police, allegedly for no good reason.[29] In November 2007,several policemen were wounded by gunfire in a battle with some 200 youths inVilliers le Bel (Val d'Oise) after two youths without helmets sped down the streeton a prohibited mini-cycle, crashed into a police car, and were killed.[30] Thereis no way of knowing if Abu and Adama Kamara, Ibrahim Sow, Maka Kante,and Samuel Lambalamba, sentenced in July 2010 to prison terms ranging fromthree to fifteen years, are innocent as they claim, or fall guys for fellow youths;[31] it is as if the court were judging an incident that occurred in a distant foreignland. After a similar accident in Woippy, a banlieue of Metz, gendarmes werepelted with stones, fourteen vehicles including a bus were torched, telephonebooths and a school were sacked. These are but a few of many incidents whereyouths in stolen cars or motorcycles, running away from the police, crash and killthemselves.Yet, no matter how far-fetched the version of the "aggrieved" party, it alwaystakes precedence over the official version in French media. Any policeinvestigation is, by the media's definition, suspect. The police, media suggest,should not engage in hot pursuit. One sympathizer explained in front of TVcameras that the police knew the names of the joy riders in the stolen car andcould have let them go home and then arrested them the next day. After all, whocares if the boys cause a fatal accident in the meantime?The media offered a brief tour when the police raided a housing projectin the Parisian banlieue of Sevran (Seine Saint Denis) controlled by drug dealers.Graffiti arrows indicate "shops"; residents tell how they pass through checkpointsto access their buildings, and TV cameramen were lucky to escape with theirfootage. "Militants" responded to the raid with the now-familiar torching,sacking, and shooting at policemen. Government promises to enforce the lawprovoke an outcry from compassionate sociologists, left-wing magistrates andmayors, members of do-good associations who protest that "repression is not thesolution." Imposing undue restraint on the police has simply emboldened theiradversaries. Over 5,000 were injured in the line of duty in 2009, and in JanuaryFebruary 2010, some 1,100.[32] In recent incidents, police have been surrounded,pelted with paving stones, kicked, punched, hit on the head with hammers,humiliated, and treated like mugging victims, not agents of law enforcement.International media, relying heavily on Agence France-Presse and AssociatedPress wire services, have shown little interest in France's delinquency problem.The November 2005 "intifada" was mistakenly equated with the Watts riots; therecent anti-niqab (full-face veil) law is attributed to intolerance. The grievancesof minorities are taken at face value, and government efforts to enforce the laware denounced as concessions to far right extremism.In fact, and contrary to what has been written about French society, thereis no tradition of segregation or ghettoes. People are constantly in motion; publictransportation carries passengers from banlieue to city centers, andneighborhoods are mixed. The recent ghettoization of certain housing projectsalways incompleteis a function of their criminalization. When the cads

(criminal bosses) rule the roost, those who can, leave; those who cannot, submit.It's a small-time jihad.The Gangster as VictimThe holdup of a gambling casino in Uriage on the night of July 15, 2010,would have been one more item on the long list of unresolved crimes if the policein hot pursuit had not been led deep into the gangsters' turf in Villeneuve enIsre, a housing project in the banlieue of Grenoble. The two gangsters wearingbulletproof vests opened fire with automatic weapons. The police returned fire,killing one with a shot to the head. His accomplice escaped. All hell broke loosein the project. The "victim" this time was not a youngster on a motorcycle butrather a 27-year-old repeat offender Karim Boudouda, already convicted of threeseparate incidents of armed robbery but still on the loose. Ninety cars weretorched the first night, twenty the next night. Armored cars, commandoes, andriot police were brought in, but Boudouda's friends fired on the police while hismother announced her intention to sue the police. The owner of a bar, said to beKarim Boudouda's cousin, was arrested after an arms cache and shooting rangewere discovered on the premises. Several people were detained and released inconnection with the search for Boudouda's accomplice, whose name anddescription were not made public. In the first week of September, the allegedaccomplice, repeat-offender Monsif Ghabbour, was finally located, arrested, andarraigned, then immediately released under supervision. The police are outraged,and the prosecutor has appealed the release. Some officers directly involved inthe shootout were transferred to other regions or sent out to pasture in whatlooked like a shameful retreat. Heady with victory, Karim's men pursued themwith personalized death threats.[33]Eleven days later in Saint Aignan, Luigi B. crashed through a barrier,dragging a gendarme on the hood of his car for 500 meters, then pretended tostop at a second barrier, suddenly sped up, heading straight for two gendarmes.One of them shot at the speeding car as it whizzed by. When Luigi's body wasfound ten kilometers further on, his gens du voyage community (nomads ofvarious origins, some now sedentary) went on the rampage. Vandals sacked apolice station, terrified a baker, chopped down a dozen trees, and attacked publicbuildings in half a dozen different localities in the following days. SociologistMichel Wieviorka analyzed the two situations with typical French rhetoric: "Thenomads don't expect anything from society; the banlieue's expectations aredisappointed." He added, "It's territorial, not ethnic or religious."[34] No one inSaint Aignan expected to be shot in the head as was the Israeli officer in aLebanese incident for cutting down a dozen trees on the Israeli side of the border.The familiar pattern of retreat on the home front was matched withreversals in foreign lands. In August, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb threatenedto punish "the treasonous apostates, the children and agents of Christian France[and] Sarkozythe enemy of Allah" for a bungled attempt to rescue a Frenchhostagebeheaded one week laterin Mali.[35] Two French reporters havebeen hostages in Afghanistan since December 2009. Lebanese villagerssurrounded, disarmed, stoned, and threatened to kill members of a French U.N.contingent as if they were policemen in a French housing project.Contrary to expectations, the government did not slip away for theAugust vacation, hoping heads would cool in Villeneuve en Isre by September.The president, flanked by Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux and Immigration

Minister Eric Besson, stepped into the ring, announced a series of toughmeasures, and dared to link crime with immigration. Not all crime, not allimmigrants. But he broke the taboo, simply by stating the obvious and followedwith a promise of harsh measures for criminals who shoot at the police.Moreover, naturalized cop-killers will lose their citizenship. Tax officials will besent into the projects to crack down on people living in luxury while on the dole.The drug market will be dismantled. Severe delinquency, polygamy, and femalecircumcision will also be grounds for withdrawal of nationality (this provisionwas subsequently withdrawn). Illegal Roma camps will be dismantled, and illegalresidents sent back to Romania, Bulgaria, etc.[36]Suddenly, the media came forth with in-depth reports on Villeneuve enIsre, developed thirty years ago as a model of social harmony with public andprivate housing nestled side by side in a beautifully landscaped setting outside thecollege town of Grenoble. What went wrong? The crisis, officials said, causeddeterioration; middle-class property owners left. More to the point, it wasrevealed that Boudouda was a "lieutenant" in one of the crime families. Thecurrent crop of Maghrebi kingpins are more ruthless and savage than earliergenerations of Grenoble gangstersItalian Mafiosi followed by French-Italianneo-Mafiosi.[37] Their operations are all the more brutal for being poorlyplanned and executed. They settle misunderstandings with sequestration, torture,or bursts of automatic gunfire.Xenophobia, "Islamophobia," or Dhimmitude?The government's straight talk has shaken France to the timbers.President Sarkozy was accused of cynically fishing for right-leaning-populistFront National voters, replaying the disgraceful Vichy past collaboration,separating the French-French from the foreign-French (akin to death-campselections) and, trying to draw attention away from his administration's perfidiousscandals.[38] In the rush to condemn the government for saying the unspeakable,critics have blithely stampeded over the distinction between a misguided 12-yearold bicycle thief and a 27-year-old repeat-offender who shoots at policemen withan automatic weapon.Not a day goes by without a barrage of statements condemning thepresident. Former Socialist prime minister Michel Rocardremembered fordeclaring in the early 1980s that "France cannot take in all the world'smisery"[39]stuck the Nazi label on President Sarkozy and accused him offomenting civil war. Every opposition leader big or small took up the keyboard ormicrophone to vilify the president in the most emphatic terms. No Holocaustmetaphor is left unturned. Deporting illegal Romas is equated with roundups ofJews in the 1940s. The rhetoric has come full circle: "immigrants" (meaningArab-Muslim and sub-Saharan Africans) are today's Jews when in fact the peoplewho are now persecuting Jews belong to that lawless class loosely defined as"immigrants."The media are giving wall-to-wall coverage to the president's mostsevere critics while limiting the defense of strict law enforcement to officials,giving the impression that the government stands alonethe 2 percent increasein approval ratings for the president and Prime Minister Franois Fillonnotwithstanding. Dominique de Villepin, the president's arch-rival within thegoverning Union for a Popular Movement party, accused the president of"transgression."[40] With his customary grandiloquence, Villepin declared that

Sarkozy has stained the French flag with shame.[41]

Can the truth about the Maghrebi gangsters of Villeneuve en Isre beextrapolated to other banlieues, other crimes, other nights of flame anddestruction? Are law abiding citizens, Muslims included, supposed to grin andbear it? If this criminality is not strictly delinquent but is rather allied with awider assault on Western values and way of life, French society must look it inthe face. Thugs, the lumpenproletariat, and juvenile delinquents are easilyenrolled as foot soldiers in totalitarian enterprises. These not-so-French, lawlessyouths play their role in a conflict that radiates outward from a flash point in theMiddle East.While disillusioned advocates of law and order think that none of thetough measures announced will ever be applied, defenders of the downtroddenswear that every criminal case involving immigrants is deliberately highlighted tofoment hostility and justify repression. Such accusations may seem plausible aslong as the issues are debated in the abstract. But concrete realities are stubborn.Thirty-five-year-old Lies Hebbaj came to public attention in April 2010when he called a press conference in Nantes to contest a traffic ticket issued tohis wife for driving with obstructed vision in a niqab.[42] He has since beencharged with welfare fraud, financial irregularities, violation of labor law, andrape and assault on a wife he repudiated in 2007. It is alleged that Hebbaj, whohas four niqab-clad wives and sixteen children, has control of annual receipts ofmore than 300,000 in welfare payments, a third of which is fraudulently grantedto his polygamous wives declared as single mothers. Should he be divested of theFrench nationality he acquired by marrying a French woman?[43]Two veiled women lost in yards of black fabric appeared on television tocomplain that Hebbajtheir husband and companion respectively, and the fatherof their childrenis a scapegoat. Sarkozy's critics say the Hebbaj case was pulledout of a hat to serve the government's nefarious projects. But it is Hebbaj whocame to public attention with a controversial press conference. Why, when thereis ample evidence of polygamy and welfare fraud, did he feel invulnerable? Whydo the bandits of Villeneuve en Isre think they are more powerful than thepolice?They feel invulnerable because they are not apprehended or punishedand, furthermore, they cannot be criticized or identified without raising a hue andcry. Hundreds of punk jihadists screaming "F__k France" can go amok but noone has the right to say they belong to a specific group or current. No one is evenallowed to speculate on what they might have in common with otherlawbreakersunless one portrays them as hapless victims of injustice.ConclusionDoes the French government have the ways and means or will to imposelaw and order? Every law enforcement effort entails the danger of igniting ageneralized insurrection on an overwhelming scale. It is easy to scold PresidentSarkozy as did The New York Times,[44] parroting the French leftists, or on theother hand, to mock the president with a long list of unfulfilled law and orderpromises. But it would be wiser to ask why authorities in this western Europeannation with so much to lose keep mollifying antagonistic elements in the vainhope of avoiding a confrontation. And how is this any different from the freeworld hiding under the cover of peace processes while Iran moves inexorably to

the point of no return?

The Islamic factor in both domestic strife and international conflicts isdenied. Genocidal intentions inscribed in the charters of Hamas and the PalestineLiberation Organization, Muslim Brotherhood documents, mosque sermons,statements by Arab and Muslim leaders, as well as the Qur'an and the Hadith areignored. Criminal acts and jihadist actions are treated as miscellaneousaberrations. Coherent evidence is smashed into a thousand pieces and thrown tothe winds, and thinkers who try to put the puzzle together are slapped down.There are no images of the brutal attacks cited here or the hundreds ofothers committed day in and day out. France's video surveillance network isunderdeveloped, in part because of opposition from socialist mayors and civillibertarians. But one can find a mirror image of the savage gestures, primitiveweapons, and murderous rage of those youths in video footage from the latestMiddle East reality showthe Gaza flotilla. The free world's Everyman is adeliberately unprepared soldier rappelling to the decks of the Mavi Marmara.French radio reported that Nicolas Sarkozy urged Benjamin Netanyahu toexercise restraint after the August 2010 sneak attack from Lebanon. Even if thisis false, it remains plausible, and would show that, for all his tough talk, thepresident has not yet grasped the connection between his weakness against theinsurgency in France and misguided peacemaking in the Middle East.*Nidra Poller is an American journalist residing in Paris since 1972. Her latest work is AlDura--Long Range Ballistic Myth. Originally published in Middle East Quarterly 2011,Winter 25-36. Reprinted here via author permission.

Antisemitic Hatred and Violence in France

Marc Knobel *Since the start of the Second Intifada, a wave of anti-Jewish violence hasswept almost simultaneously over France and Western democracies. But, inFrance, it all began on October 1st 2000.Key Words: Antisemitism, Arab, Jew, Muslim, France, Intifada, Hate Crime, Violence,

Similar assaults have shaken the Jewish community over the past thirteen years, periodically,repeatedly, endlessly, turning places of worship, schools, worshippers, and certain leaders ormembers of the Jewish community into a long list of terribly vulnerable targets.October 2000--October 1, 2000 Congregants begin leaving their synagogue in Paris Aubervilliers district when asmall white car suddenly heads for them. They scatter, no one is injured, and the car speeds off. Thepolice are notified, rush to the scene, but leave just as quickly. Several hours later, worshippers aredoused with am unknown liquid sprayed from the adjoining playground. They run out in panic.--October 2, 2000 a Paris (19th arrondissement) synagogue receives telephone threats and insultsand an incendiary device is thrown into the synagogue courtyard.--October 3, 4 2000, an inflammatory device is hurled at Villepinte's synagogue.--October 4, 5 2000 Jewish students are assaulted outside the Ohr Yossef school (19tharrondissement, Paris).--October 6, 2000 children attending Saint-Ouen's Gaston-Tenouji Jewish day school are pelted withstones and insulted.--October 7, 2000 a break-in and theft is reported at the Bagnolet synagogue.--October 7, 2000 a Molotov cocktail is thrown into a kosher restaurant in Paris.--October 7, 2000 an unidentified assailant places a Molotov inside the courtyard of in AubervilliersChnei Or school but it is extinguished before detonation by student.--October 8th, a similar device explodes at Clichy-sous-Bois's synagogue--October 8th, 2000 Jewish tombstones in Paris's Trappes region are desecrated, eternal lights rippedoff, and flower pots smashed.--October 8, 2000 three Molotov cocktails are hurled at an Ulis synagogue. The synagogue's groundfloor is ravaged.--October 8, 2000 the Trappes synagogue is destroyed by a fire.--October _ 2000, the Creil synagogue rabbi receives racist curses.--October _ 2000 two firebombs are hurled at Creil's synagogue and escaping worshippers receiveracial insults.--October _ 2000 two Choisy-le-Roi apartments are set on fire in (Val-de-Marne region)--October _ 2000 In Paris, a person wearing a Jewish pendant necklace is assaulted by a NorthAfrican near the Pyrnes Metro station.--October 12-13, 2000 Bondy synagogue windows break by firebombs burning one room.--October 12-13, 2000 20th arrondissement Paris, a synagogue door is burned--October 12-13, 2000 a Molotov cocktail is thrown into Saint-Ouen's Tenouji school,

--October 13, 2000, 19th arrondissement Paris, 40 men carrying Molotov cocktails and shoutingantisemitic slogans, throw two firebombs into Chevilly-Larue synagogue.--October 13, 2000, unignited explosives are found in a Bagnolet synagogue pelted with stones thenight before.--October 13, 2000 Congregants leaving services at Villeneuve-la-Garenne synagogue are cursed,threatened, and pelted by apartment balcony flower pots. Stone-throwing youths armed withbalaclavas yelled antisemitic curses and chase three.--October 15 -16 2000 two Molotov cocktails are thrown into the Meudon Jewish CommunityCenter and synagogue -- Allah Akbar, is yelled.All these tragic incidents were noted or briefly reported in the media at the time. For thecrucial period between the 1st and 25th of October 2000, we noted fifty attacks in Paris and theoutskirts. The most recurrent are Molotov cocktails and other projectiles thrown at schools orsynagogues. What targets? Private property (apartments or business premises) were targeted duringthat period. As for attacks against people, no category is spared. As for the geographic distributionof antisemitic acts and attacks, it is obvious. We can see with greater precision that the highestnumber of anti-Jewish attacks occurs in the eastern sector of Paris the 19th and 20tharrondissements where there is a strong concentration of multiethnic populations. Out of a total of14 antisemitic acts committed during that period in the 19th arrondissement, there were 3 threats, 3insults, 3 objects and 2 Molotov cocktails thrown, 1 physical assault, 1 place sacked and 1 firebombplaced. The highest number of anti-Jewish attacks in the banlieue occurred in Seine-Saint-Denis (themost disadvantaged French department): 14 acts, including 7 Molotov cocktails and 3 blunt objectsthrown. This department is closely followed by the Val-de-Marne, bordering on the capital: 10 antiJewish attacks including 3 cases of arson and 2 physical assaults. Whether in Paris or the banlieue,the paroxysm was reached between Tuesday the 10th and Tuesday the 17th of October 2000.Political and Media Reactions (2000 2003)Over the course of ten days, 70 antisemitic incidents were tallied covering Toulouse to Parisand from Lille to Rouen marked by tags, verbal aggressions, and inflammatory devices. Thepolitical class and the media seemed to be embarrassed by an unprecedented and terribly seriousphenomenon.Interior Minister Daniel Vaillant reaffirmed the police presence surrounding Jewish housesof worship. He stated there was no reason to believe in a resurgence of antisemitism-- and insteadclassified the events as sadly fashionable phenomenon perpetrated by wayward youths.It was a surprising explanation. If its only a sadly fashionable phenomenon perpetratedby wayward youths that has nothing to do with a return of antisemitism, why did the InteriorMinister bother to take additional precautions? If the events in question have nothing to do withantisemitism, and are isolated acts of the wayward, how should such violence be classified? Howelse could one explain multiple and brutally violent anti-Jewish attacks conducted in record time.Were not all the victims Jewish? Were not all the sites connected to the Jewish community? Isnt itantisemitism?For several years reactions were few and far between-- as if politicians were tooembarrassed to comment on the incidents. As well, the anti-Jewish aggressions were met withdisinterest by the public and politicians.A feeling of deliberate abandonment pervaded the Jewish community -- until May 27, 2003when things changed. Against the solemn setting of the presidential palace, [President] JacquesChirac made a combative speech denouncing antisemitism:Today, you are no longer alone. France stands with you against antisemitism. BecauseFrance is attacked on its soil. Because France is insulted when a synagogue burns on its soil.Because France is humiliated when, on its soil, a Jewish child has to transfer to anotherschool to escape bullying, intimidations, and insults. The Republic owes all its children theprotection of the law. Antisemitism is contrary to all French values. It is intolerable.Antisemitic acts must be relentlessly combatted and punished with utmost severity . We

Five Hypotheses on AntisemitismIn our research and studies, we took a close look at acts (threats and violence) committedagainst the Jewish community from the 1st of October 2000 to the year 2013. We tried to understandwhat could be the motives of the assailants. And, in the study we asked ourselves number of keyquestions.--In the France of the 2000s, isnt hostility against Jews widely developed among youths who live inso-called sensitive neighborhoods, often victims of discrimination-- that may be seeking anidentity?--do the youths identify at times with the Palestinians believing that they are avenging byattacking French Jews?--Does the Israeli-Palestinian conflict play an important role? In short, might the Israeli-Palestinianconflict be a (false) pretext that durably breaches the taboo against antisemitism?--Do Islamists take advantage of banlieues discontent by their disseminate their pseudo-theses?--Does material or spiritual poverty create terrorism vs indoctrination, obscurantism, andfanaticism?--Is the French Republic and its core principles, values, and culture, endangered by Islamism?We quickly elaborated five working hypotheses in an effort to understand of what the Jewsare victims. We believe that the following five hypotheses clarify this situation.ResponsesFirst. Some people are animated by a more or less vague sentiment of hostility to Israel exacerbatedby the mediatization of clashes in the Middle East. This facilitates their projection into a conflict,that to their eyes, reproduces patterns of exclusion and failure of which they themselves feel likevictims in France. Already in the year 2000, film director Mehdi Lallaoui, a figure of the associativemovement, militant in the banlieues for more than thirty years and figure of the Marche for Equality[march for equality] organized in 1983, explained it quite well:For me, its an identification in a world of images. These youths see violent clashes ontelevision; they feel solidarity and, by association, attack Jewish symbols for lack of Israelitargets, he correctly says.And Malek Boutih, former president of SOS Racisme (1999-2003), offered this interestingobservation: These youths have a destructured discourse. They slip quickly from anti-Zionism toantisemitism, from Israel to Jews.The above statements and other lucid associative militants repeat that we must not import theconflict to our national territory and target places of worship of the Jewish community (any morethan those of the Muslim community). They also issue a warning, because they foresee the possiblemultiplication of these aggressions. Anyway, how does it help the Palestinian cause when pettythugs assault young Jews in France? What kind of support is that? Is the Palestinian causeencouraged, fortified? Of course not. Let us say clearly: nothing justifies an attack against a koshergrocery store, nothing justifies an assault on a Jewish adolescent. Is this reminder necessary here?So, might there be other reasons ? Might there be a culture of antisemitism in certain banlieues?Arent these youths simply motivated by hatred of Jews to attack Jewish targets (schools, houses ofworship, shops, private homes, etc.)? Further, arent they encouraged and/or indoctrinated byIslamist agitators or preachers of hate? In short, does the conflict explain it all? No. It may explainsome things but it doesnt explain this itch to have it out with Jews in France when sparks fly in theMiddle East.Second. This antisemitism conquered its worldwide rights in August 2001, at the UN Conferenceagainst racism, xenophobia and intolerance in Durban, South Africa. The Israeli-Palestinianconflict, that had no place there, occupied all the participants: Israel was banned from thecommunity of nations, demonstrators marched and shouted: One Jew, one bullet, a slogan adapted

racist crud and pronounced in the beautiful crystalline language of antiracism. Now they can say,Those Jews, those racists.Third. It is important to take a look at the reaction of the Muslim community at that time. We alsowant to measure to what degree Muslims might have been swept up in this violence since October2000. In our study, we examine the embarrassment of politicians and the media, at the idea ofdenouncing antisemitic acts on the pretext that some may have been perpetrated by Muslims. Whichleads us to ask why should we necessarily silence the fact that aggressions were or might have beencommitted by Arab-Muslim youths? Would it be politically incorrect to say so? As far as we areconcerned, we think that when a person acts in the name of a religion, an identity or an ideology toharm another person on the grounds of his religion, identity or ideology, the public should beinformed. But we try to avoid conflation. It would in fact be unfair and particularly shocking toattribute to the entire Arab-Muslim community of France the violence committed by severalindividuals. There are black sheep everywhere, we cannot repeat it often enough. They should bedenounced. But it should not, must not be conflated with Islam. We insist on this point.This being said, what is going on? Muslims cannot be criticized for supporting the Palestiniancause. They are free to express their opinions, defend a cause, and affirm their solidarity. The samegoes for Jews that support Israel. However, there is a risk when people leave the realm ofdemocratic debate and become attracted, fascinated, or subjugated by inflammatory preaching thattreats Israel or, on the opposite side, Palestinians, with rage. Listening, reading, heeding thosepreachers (of hate) can lead to getting caught up in a spiral. It will be necessarily painful. Muslimsdo react whenever its a question of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It interests them far more thanother conflicts: Iraq, Chechnya, Kashmir, Bosnia, the Sahara and the Polisario Front Isnt thisfocalization excessive? Some weak-minded individuals constantly reading and hearing, and beingtold day and night that Israelis behave like monsters while, on the contrary, the Palestinian cause isidealized, elevated to the new liberation combat, take it out on Jews for lack of Israelis. Theseunfortunate targets are assimilated with Israelis, the oppressors. To avenge their Palestinianbrothers, they beat up Jews. But this explanation does not satisfy us. So we advance some otherhypotheses that also help us understand why things have been empoisoned to this extent from theyear 2000 and what are other (eventual) motivations of the aggressors.Fourth. In one way, the aggressors imagine that Jews are protected, that they are all rich andpowerful. The old stereotypes are here. The tragic murder of Ilan Halimi does in fact derive fromthe survival of a structural antisemitism based on sickening old clichs that have been going aroundfor centuries: Jews surely work in banks, media, or politics. They have money and power (sic) asif no Jew could be poor or needy, a manual worker or small shopkeeper. These are the raciststereotypes peddled by small time thugs that provoked the death of Ilan Halimi.Fifth. Islamists work over the banlieues; they know how to designate the enemy or enemies (theJews, France). They say Jews and, to a lesser degree, Christians rejected the Prophet of Islam. Intheir sermons or on the Internet, they give a vision of Islam as victim of conspiracy, under siege,threatened by the Americans, Europeans, Jews. Though these Islamists are definitely a minority (atthe most a few thousand), their influence is increasingly strong. Small Islamist groups (Salafists)mounted an operation aimed at Muslims in France. Often violent and antisemitic, they aredetermined to impose their conception of Islam on all. In fact, antiterrorist agents think the nextgenerations of radical activists will come from their ranks.Face with the significant rise of radical Islam, authorities in 2002 decided to reinforce theirvigilance on foreign preachers. Coercive measures, often mediatized, were taken to punishincitement to violence, jihad, antisemitism and racism. It rapidly became apparent that the Internethas become a new mode de propaganda favored by Islamists. By the end of 2004, there were 15Francophone sites followed by the police. Internet, like video cassettes, enabled Salafists ofdifferent regions to make ties. We will recall that, from the late 1990s, significant means weremobilized to fight against Islamist cells implanted in our territory and likely one day to perpetrateterrorist attacks in France or strike French interests abroad. For example the Islamist network knownas the Chechnyan channels that, as we recalled, planned in 2001 and 2002 all sorts of terrorist

double attack at Galeries Lafayette and Printemps Haussmann, on December 7, 1985 (43wounded), the explosion at the FNAC Sport in the Forum des Halles, February 5, 1986, that left 22wounded. The attack on September 17, 1986 in front of the Tati shop on rue de Rennes (6tharrondissement) that killed 7 and wounded 55. The clearly identified, highly symbolic targetschosen by the terrorists were particularly vulnerable. In the beginning of 2000, political andinstitutional authorities became aware that France would not be spared; sooner or later, terroristswould strike the capital again. It wouldnt be the same terrorists, the context would be different, andthe motivations not necessarily the same.Police and intelligence services began to track certain individuals for example those whomade frequent trips to Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan. The point was to gather reliable informationabout their activities, their families and entourage. Certain mosques were closely watched as well asInternet sites that make apologies for jihad and indoctrinate young people. The services infiltratednetworks, acquiring a solid reputation for foiling terrorist attacks in our cities. The Salafists in thosedays were foreigners living in France, in certain housing projects. From there they started toindoctrinate youths. Youths in rupture with society, with no future and often already with policerecords Petty delinquents or drug dealers, they organized and set up cells in their territory:buildings, an underground parking garage, basements or stairways. The lookouts, little kids, tookpart in the drug trade. The police kept an eye on them, but were also interested in the Salafists,allured by the chance to use the wayward kids by converting them to a political-religious ideology.Thats how they went from being delinquents to jihadists, turning their backs on drugs and dealing.They could be radicalized in a few short months. Thats when the police would lose track of them-they disappeared. Mohamed Merah was one of them. The Islamic identity is a refuge for lost orstigmatized youths from disadvantaged banlieues, adolescents alienated from their families. It offerscomfort and solutions to people looking for meaning; it answers their questions about the family andauthority. Young converts who go to the mosque find a warm supportive environment and a path tojoining a community. In fact, the Salafist convert is often a man between 18 and 35 years-old, wholives in one of the troubled banlieues of a big city in France, lost and bewildered: They generallyhave troubled lives, are socially degraded, emotionally instable and live in neighborhoods plaguedby unemployment and violence, lacking good public transportation and decent housing, says thespecialist Olivier Bobineau.Of course converts and many other youths living in the banlieues and certain housingprojects are socially degraded. The political system has failed, its a fact. Its true that the Republichas abandoned its banlieues and that is shameful. But living in poverty doesnt automatically makeyou a jihadist. Material or spiritual poverty isnt what transforms a man into a perfect terrorist, adehumanized, cold, merciless monster; its done by indoctrination, obscurantism, and fanaticism.Furthermore, a man (or woman) living in a well-off milieu can be drawn into the arms of jihadism.So it is not a social problem, its a deliberate choice. Terrorism is a conscious choice, never a socialobligation.And where does antisemitism come in? Salafist preachers operate in an Arab contextdominated by the problematics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They mobilize by surfing on thiswave. Their solidarity with the combat of Palestinian populations is an obligation, according toDominique Thomas, research scholar at Ehess [School of Graduate Studies in Social Sciences]. Yes,but this explanation does not suffice. While radical Islam is marked by a profound visceralantisemitism, it touches all Muslim communities, explains Samir Amghar. Aside from connectionswith the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that remain a focal point for grievances, it is also the productof an antisemitism of the land of origin that mixes with the heritage of traditional Frenchantisemitism of the 1930s. In an interview with Pierre-Andr Taguieff by Violaine de Montclos Taguieff: ces islamistes malades de la haine des Juifs [those Islamists sick with Jew-hatred]published in Le Point on Thursday October 11, 2012, pp. 36-7--the philosopher comes back to thesubject with maestro. His knowledge is such, that he delivers a perfect analysis of the phenomenon.What does he say? Asked whether there is not some radical Islamism in antisemitism, Pierre- AndrTaguieff replies:

Jewish discourse. This Islamization is not reduced to the invocation of certain Koranicverses or hadiths. It consists of explicitly or implicitly raising jihad against the Jews to thesixth religious obligation that every Muslim must respect. Such is the outcome of thedoctrinal reinterpretation of Islam started in the 1930s by Muslim Brotherhood ideologuesbeginning with Hassan al-Banna (1906-1949), as well as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin alHusseini (1895-1974). Al-Husseini, an Arab-Muslim leader who had already declared war on theJews in the 1920s before settling in Berlin during the Second World War to collaborate with theanti-Jewish propaganda destined for the Muslim world, after meeting Hitler on November 28, 1941.The growing Islamization of the Palestinian cause, a victimary cause universalized by the gameof crisscrossed propaganda, conferred on it the symbolic status of a privileged front in the globaljihad, continues Taguieff. This is why the last great Judeophobe wave is characterized by a strongmobilization of the Muslim world against Israel and international Zionism, accompanied, in thecase of Islamist preachers, by an apocalyptic vision of the final combat against the Jews.Antisemitic ActsLet us now examine the available statistics. Between January and July 2001, a slightdecrease in antisemitic violence is noted. But in June 2001, the number of attacks increases (to 23);29 are committed in August, 65 in September, and 42 just in the month of December 2001. In itsannual report, the Commission nationale consultative des droits de lHomme (CNCDH) [Nationalconsultative Human rights commission] notes that violent acts and incidents registered over thepreceding two years in France (2000-2001) clearly show a direct connection with developments onthe international scene, more particularly those related to the Palestinian problem. In fact, with theexception of one assault attributable to the far right, exactions frequently involve perpetrators thatcome from so-called sensitive neighborhood, often of immigrant origin, often involved incommon delinquency, and apparently projecting onto the Middle East conflict. The CNCDHobserves that in the eyes of these individuals the conflict reproduces the exclusion and failures ofwhich they feel themselves victims. The analysis is correct.And, from 2002 to 2012? In relation with the Interior Minister, the Service de protection dela communaut juive (SPCJ) does excellent work annually recording various antisemitic acts(violent actions, threats, and intimidation) yields the following statistics: 936 (2002); 601(2003);974 (2004); 508 (2005); 541 (2006); 402 (2007); 474 (2008); 832 (2009); 466 (2010); 389 (2011);614 (2012). The ten year total for antisemitic acts is 6,737. This is substantial.

The typology of violent actions most often corresponds with physical assault againstpersons or minors can be targeted. The remainder concerns property (vandalism) aimed atprivate property (homes and cars) or arson. The attacks also are aimed at places of worship,cemeteries, or memorials. The majority of actions are registered in Ile-de-France, followed(far behind) by the regions Rhne-Alpes, Provence-Alpes-Cte dAzur, and Alsace.Threats and intimidation are most often divided between graffiti, verbal aggressionsagainst individuals, including remarks, threatening gestures, insulting demonstrations,distribution of tracts, mail, and posters in the capital and on the other side of the ring road.Most of the graffiti were on private residences or vehicles and, to a lesser extent, onprofessional, associative, or institutional premises and public buildings. The majority werefound in Ile-de-France followed by Rhne-Alpes, PACA, Alsace and Nord-Pas-de-Calais.These acts and threats reflect different dimensions of contemporary antisemitism, itsfamiliar roots, and more recent, complex political or social junctions that we are able toanalyze.Combatting Antisemitism: Chirac and SarkozyAs we mentioned above, things changed after May 27 2003. On the occasion of the67th anniversary of the CRIF, Jacques Chirac made a combative speech in the solemn

political figures) denounced antisemitism. Nicolas Sarkozy made the fight against therecrudescence of antisemitic acts in France one of his priorities.- November 15, 2003, when the orthodox Jewish school Merkaza Thora in Gagny (SeineSaint-Denis) was partially destroyed by fire then Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozyrecognized an obvious racist antisemitic connotation. The word antisemitism must bepronounced. Honesty means not denying the evidence. When a Jewish school is torched, itis hard for me to not think that its an antisemitic act.-At the end of November, Nicolas Sarkozy precisely instructed prefects to reinforcesecurity at places of worship and schools. They were invited to strengthen relations withrepresentatives of the Jewish community and alert communes to the need for surveillancecameras in streets close to religious establishments.-Another example: in 2009, Nicolas Sarkozy firmly condemned the unacceptableviolence committed in France under the pretext of the Middle East conflict. He ensured thatthese crimes must not remain unpunished. Presenting his holiday wishes to religiousauthorities, he expressed (also) his utmost solidarity with the direct and indirect victims ofthis behavior that is unworthy of our country, unworthy of the 21st century.-Then came the murders committed in Toulouse, on March 19, 2012 by Mohammed Merah.Shortly before 8: 30 in the morning, when pupils were entering classrooms at the OzarHatorah school, a helmeted man parks his scooter. He walks calmly toward the school,takes out his weapon, and fires at a group standing in front of the building. A teacher ofreligion at the collge [equivalent of Junior High], Jonathan Sandler, 30 years-old, is shot inthe stomach. He collapses at the feet of his 5 year-old son Arieh, also mortally wounded.The killer takes a few steps into the courtyard and shoots again. The 7 year-old daughter ofthe principal, Myriam Monsonego, tries to run away. She takes a few steps before beingshot in the back. Then the killer shoots little Gabriel Sandler, 4 years-old. Then he goesback to Myriam, brutally grabs her by the hair, and finishes her off with a bullet to the head.Then he rides away on his cycle. Another adolescent is critically wounded. Children arescreaming all over the place. It is a horror. Pupils and staff take the victims into the chapel.Most of the pupils are praying, others are crying. The agitation is generalized. A 16 yearold boy, trained as a lifesaver, tries in vain to revive one of the children. All the faces aretwisted in despair. When, a few minutes later, parents come looking for their children, theyhug them to their chests, in tears or dazed.At 9 AM, the prefecture is alerted to secure all Jewish schools and synagogues inthe department. At 10:15, the public prosecutor of Toulouse confirms that the killer shot ateveryone who crossed his path, children and adults. At the same time, Nicolas Sarkozywas interviewed on Radio France Outre-mer (RFO), when he heard the news. Stunned bythe Toulouse tragedy, he immediately gave instructions:1. His Interior Minister Claude Guant would follow operations from Toulouse.2. He would receive representatives of the Jewish and Muslim communitiestogether, to demonstrate national unity.3. He interrupted his presidential campaign activities for several days.The president immediately went to Toulouse. Declaring This is a national tragedy, heasked for a minute of silence in all French schools in memory of those martyred children.All of this was happening in the middle of an election campaign. The killings burst likethunder when attention had been focused on the presidential campaign, public opinionpolls, and the platforms of the two main candidates, Nicolas Sarkozy and the socialistFranois Hollande. French journalists and foreign correspondents rushed to Toulouse.Nothing else mattered but following, minute by minute, the siege of Mohamed Merahs

22nd of March. Visits to Internet news sites rose to 3.45 million hits on Wednesday (asagainst an average of 2 million per day) for Le Monde, 2.9 million (as against 1.7 million)for Le Figaro. Both of the major candidates had to react.Journalist Franz-Olivier Giesbert (in Franz-Olivier Giesbert, Derniers cahiers.Scnes de la vie politique en 2012, Paris, Flammarion, 2012) who has his own sources, tellshow Nicolas Sarkozy and Franois Hollande exploited the Merah affair. Reality orfiction, this account makes one wonder about the reality of political life. According toGiesbert, on the morning of the killings at the Jewish school, Prime Minister FranoisFillon got a furious phone call from Nicolas Sarkozy, determined to drop everything and goto Toulouse: What the hell is going on, no one is mobilized, thats not good, not good atall. The synagogues have to be protected right away and the soldiers shouldnt leave theirbarracks! Giesbert claims that Franois Fillon was not offended by the presidentsinjunction: Nicolas Sarkozy has a sixth sense, he told me, a few days later. And he isterribly impatient. When he has an idea, it has to be carried out without delay. We were allcrushed by the news, totally stunned. If he hadnt been there the machine of the State wouldprobably have taken much longer to get going, says Giesbert. Sarkozy knew that this affaircould put him back in the saddle. So he immediately transmitted instructions to his troops:dignity and sobriety. As for Hollande, according to Giesbert he was smart enough to sticklike a Band-Aid to the president. No one could accuse him of playing against France or, likeother candidates, disturbing the climate of national unity that gradually spread. Bybecoming Sarkozys inner lining, Hollande was imperceptibly becoming presidential.Giesbert sums it up: Their words mixed together to the point that you couldnt tellwho said what. And, as if supporting his statement, the journalist skillfully cites FranoisHollande and Nicolas Sarkozy, highlighting the strange similarity of their statements:We must all be united. When there is an attack, a horror, a racist or antisemitic act,we mustcome together. (Franois Hollande, March 20, the day after the killings atthe Jewishschool)We must come together. We should not succumb to conflation or vengeance.France canonly be great when we have national unity. (Nicolas Sarkozy, March 21)Security is the first freedom, without which the other freedoms lose their value andmeaning. (Franois Hollande, March 22)Giesbert claims that, despite the presidents declarations about interrupting thecampaign, his skillful handling of the Merah affair on all levels showed up in a modestimprovement of his poll numbers in the following days. From then on, the presidentrunning for reelection and the socialist candidate were neck in neck in the first round, whilethe gap between the two candidates narrowed in the second.And Franois Hollande? He measured the danger of Islamism. For example,Franois Hollande didnt content himself with declaring that the security of Jews is anational cause. Those are already strong words. He acknowledged that the murder of a Jewbecause he is Jewish can also become Israels affair. We are experiencing an exceptionalmoment because an exceptional tragedy occurred here, declared Franois Hollande at aceremony in Toulouse in honor of Mohammed Merahs victims.It was March 19, 2012. France was horrified by this dramatic event. I came toToulousethatday to express my compassion. I see again the faces of the principaland his wife distressed, twisted in chagrin. I remember the parents that received me,divided betweendignity and dismay, to know who, how, why. I hear again thescreams and sobs, I remember the courage of those parents, I never forgot them. Life is

many lessons . . .Ohr Torah, this

school that stands for suffering but also for hope .France will be worthy of that hope, shared with you, in the coming years . . We must beunited in our combat against terrorism. Radical Islamism is not Islam. Terrorism concernsall French people,The Annual dinner of the Conseil Reprsentatif des Institutions juives de France(CRIF) of March 20 2013 was the occasion for the political class (the president and hisgovernment in the front rows surrounding Jewish community leaders) to recall thatantisemitism endangers democracy. Sad coincidence-- the 2013 CRIF dinner coincided withtributes to the antisemitic killings in Toulouse and Montauban. Speaking at Paris PavillondErmenonville to a thousand attendees President Franois Hollande lambastedantisemitism remarking thatis not only hatred of Jews but also detestation of France. How can we accept thatpolice have to protect schools today, in the beginning of the 21st century? How can weaccept theidea that children can be frightened of going to school and parents terrifiedto send them?:The Republic will be at peace with itself when this fear hasdisappeared forever.To achieve this end Franois Hollande explained that the battle against antisemitism will becarried out through education and the lesson of the Shoah thatmust be taught everywhere without obstacles, in all collges and lyces of France,in our villages, our projects, our banlieues it is not optional,Evoking the multiplication of antisemitic tweets, the president said,There can be no impunity for those who write racist antisemitic slurs . They mustknow they will be pursued and convicted for their misdeeds.President Hollande further recalled the determination to fight terrorism and Francesengagement at this very time in Mali to eradicate this terrible evil that directly endangers alldemocracies. He also expressed approval for the teaching of secular ethics in accord withthe wishes of Education Minister Vincent Peillon, explaining that it would not be aboutgiving morality lessons, but recalling the principles of the Republic: lacit, guidelines,discipline, and rules.These examples show continuity, on the level of the chief executive (starting in2003), in the denunciation of antisemitism. The terms used are very strong and symbolic.There can be no doubt about the condemnation of antisemitism at the summit of the Stateand the determination of public authorities. One could even speak on this level of a goldenage between the Jewish community and successive presidents--a rare occurrence in France.Despite it all, the acts continue. Despite all the declarations, nothing has stopped theantisemites, and yet antisemitism is very low on the list of preoccupations of French people,(2 to 3% in public opinion polls) because Jews are perceived in the contemporary collectiveimagination as being much less vulnerable than they were in the past.Let us explain.1. In the contemporary collective imagination, Jews are perceived as being much lessvulnerable than they were in the past. A certain number of our compatriots think they areor could be protected. Example? Dont presidents or prime ministers say that to attack aJew is to attack France?2. On the contrary, others know that the Jews were persecuted and continue to be

3. Its not because you read an article from time to time relating an antisemitic attack thatyou know the subject and/or can evaluate its complexity or realize to what extent theattacks have increased So there will be an inaptitude to understand or know the facts andthe subject.4. Some exclaim: The Jews are endangered, so what? Dont they also endanger thePalestinians (sic)?5. And then, exactly what are we talking about? Is there really antisemitism? Is itantisemitism?6. Finally, in some banlieues, the pressure in favor of Islamization or re-Islamizationconcerns primarily young men in the process of marginalization. Entry into Islamcorresponds with a reconstruction of the identity on the base of the referent Islam afteran earlier commitment along political or cultural lines such as antiracism, civil rights,etc. These paths came to seem factice and doomed to failure, notably when they didntsucceed in checking the mechanism of exclusion.Difficulties in finding employment, feelings of social relegation and discrimination,perception of the negative image of Islam in public opinion, the ever present memory ofhumiliation in the French colonial past transmitted by the family environment, as if apart of their history were not inscribed in French national identity, the exhaustion of awhole series of ideologies such as Marxism or Third Worldism that inspired themobilization of their big brothers and sisters, all these reasons conjugate to confer acentral position on the Islamic identity. These re-Islamized youths are sensitive to theIsraeli-Arab conflict and various thematics proposed and developed here and there. And,with or without the Israeli -Palestinian conflict, these youths will be going after Jews.So what can be done? We must fight against what we call the spirit of Durban.The Durban Conference officialized and legitimatized antisemitism. Fightingagainst the spirit of Durban is pointing the finger at the criminal spirit that prevailed duringthat conference and ever since, making Israel, the Jews, Zionists responsible for all the illsof Humanity, the quintessence of evil, absolute evil. Within the CRIF we must continue todesignate the multiple vectors of hatred that include extremist Internet sites, antisemiticprograms broadcast by Arab-Muslim television stations, antisemitic or negationist tractsand booklets, pro-Palestinian demonstrations that degenerate Death to the Jews! heardhere or there, so-called comedy acts that trash the Jews, the troubling rise of antisemiticfeelings among banlieue youths, perfidious ignominious accusations, great racistconclaves such as Durban, stereotypes and all the sickening clichs, Islamists thatendanger the Republic Because what a strange defeat of democracy it would be to allow the extremists orIslamists to invade our lives and rule over our world. What a strange defeat it would be tobow our heads and tolerate the intolerable.Do not forget: What is endangered today by Islamism and antisemitism is indeed theRepublic itself--its principles--its values and its culture. That which endangers the Jewsinvariably endangers us all.*Marc Knobel is a historian whose most recent book is Hate and Antisemitic Violence Paris, BergInternational, 2013, 350

The Truth Marches OnNothing Can Stop It

Interview with Philippe KarsentySimon Wiesenthal Center, Paris*On June 26, 2013, the Paris Court of Appeal sentenced French media analystPhilippe Karsenty for defamation of Charles Enderlin and the French network France 2 in their rolein the Little Mohammed controversy andordered him to pay them 7,000. For nearly thirteenyears, the iconic tale detailing the death of a Palestinian child, Mohammed al-Dura, based on a livetelevision report on France 2, had become a source of internal and external condemnation. For thepast eleven years, Karsenty has alleged that the story was a pure and simple staging, opening himup to widespread opposition that is often mired in controversy and legal proceedings. On May 19,2013, this battle changed with the issuance of the Israeli governments 40-page formal reportsupporting Karsentys accusation. The following interview presents his views on this latest verdictof the Paris Court of Appeal, which refuted the findings of the Israeli report.Key Terms: Al-Dura, France, Israel, Media, Palestinian, PoliticsSimon Wiesenthal Center: You have been convicted of defaming CharlesEnderlin and France 2. You also need to pay them C= 7,000. What is yourfeeling after the verdict?Philippe Karsenty: Im pretty sad to see that my arguments were not heardby the Court of Appeal of Paris. I also regret that the magistrate saw fit toorder me to pay a large sum to the plaintiffs.SWC: Can you give us an analysis of the judgment that convicts you?PK: The Court of Appeal of Paris convicts me for saying, in November2004, something that later became evident to all reasonable minds: that theal-Dura story of Charles Enderlin and broadcast September 30, 2000, by

Appeal of Paris does not ask me to remove it.SWC: Do you have means to fight the legal battle?PK: Yes, of course. I could do as France 2 and Charles Enderlin did when Iwon in 2008, and file with the French Supreme Court to try to quash Courtof Appeal decision on technical grounds.SWC: Will you do it?PK: There are two good reasons not to do so. The first is that lately theattitude of the French magistrates appears to me questionable in some cases.So I lost some of my confidence in French justice. The second reason I didnot really want to go to the Supreme Court is that justice was only a tool,not an end in itself. In fact, it was I who chose to initiate a debate withFrance 2. Through this debate, we obtained this important outcome: France2 was forced to present its evidence, and we saw they did not have it. Itwas thus possible to see that what they claimed for yearsthe death agonyof the childwas not true.Media around the world are interested in the al-Dura casewith thenotable exception of most French media. French writer Michel Onfray hasobserved: Justice says the law does not say the right or true. This seemsparticularly valid in the context here. I know that we must use the benefitswe have received from this battle to lead the fight into other areas. Despiteall these prejudices, however, I will nevertheless use the French SupremeCourt to go after the French system. In addition, the reading of the judgmentleads me to think that if there are honest judges in France, they canonly break this judgment, which has many quirks.SWC: Can you fight the battle through any other avenues?PK: I could, for example, take a full-page ad in a major French daily andrenew my accusations of 2004 against France 2 and Charles Enderlin withmore force. Dare they sue me? I doubt it. I could also start an associationthat would aim to recognize the truth by other means. We would be strongerif we were more numerous and coordinated. I could also continue the fightby leaving France. It is a possibility I contemplate seriously.SWC: And on the political side, what can you do?PK: Politicians, of course, have an important role to play because this caseis highly political. The former president of Conseil Representatif des InstitutionsJuives de France (CRIF), Richard Prasquier, recently published anarticle in France in which he stated: Given its global and lasting impact,the al-Dura case should be reopened and processed seamlessly. If France 2does not resign it, then it would be at the political level, the French State totake responsibility: we cannot say they want to fight against anti-Semitismin France and against radical Islam in world if we do not attack the roothate propaganda fueled by deadly images, probably false. I fully share hisview.SWC: How do you analyze the tactics that France 2 and Charles Enderlinhave used to make their case?PK: In 2004, they manipulated the images to silence critics, but this turnedagainst them. They thought I would give up the fight very quickly, and theyhave not imagined that it would lead them to have to show that they had noevidence to support their initial charge. For my part, my objective in engagingFrance 2 and Charles Enderlin in the judicial field was tp force them to

his elbow and turning his head toward the France 2 cameramana boy whois supposed to be dead.SWC: Now that we have discussed recent events, can you summarize yourposition on the al-Dura affair?PK: France 2 broadcast the incident as a documentary, filmed on September30, 2000, by Arab cameraman Talal Abu Rahma, and then edited by Jerusalembased French-Israeli journalist Charles Enderlin. Enderlin also providedthe voice-over.In the broadcast, Enderlin states that the child was intentionally killedand the father seriously wounded by Israeli soldiers. This report is a fakepure and simple fabrication. Contrary to what Enderlin asserted, severaldeleted scenes show that neither the father nor the child was killed orwounded by Israeli gunfire. I can prove that the child is not dead and thathis father was not injured; the Israeli investigation shows that neither wastouched. So though both father and son are supposed to have received 15bulletsweapons of warbetween them, there is no blood on their bodies,clothes, the floor, or wall against which they were backed. Yet, withinseconds it is announced that the child is dead. even though he raises hiselbow for 10 seconds, turns his head toward the camera, drops the elbow,and retains suspended above the ground on foot. If you can find one doctorin the world supporting that this child is dead, I will bow. The findings citedhere are corroborated by great amounts of research work carried out bycompetent people, and by those trained in ballistics, forensics, biometrics,and even handwriting.SWC: So contrary to what is stated in the France 2 report, the father and thechild did not die in this way?PK: When the France 2 cameraman, Talal Abu Rahma, shut off his camerathey are alive. It is essential to take this fact into account because it demonstratesthat this story is a fake from the first to the last frame. Everythingthat happens thereafter is not our concern. Those who ask us to presentMohammed al-Dura as a living child now do not know the case or ask inbad faith. In fact, I never said that the child was still alive today because Ihave no way to prove it 13 years after the fact; a lot could have happened tohim in that time. And even if we ourselves did find Mohammed al-Dura 13years later, he would have become a young adult he is not the same, andmay be instead a brother or a cousin. In fact, if people are willing to acceptthe nonsense described above (an elbow lifted after he is dead and thetotal absence of blood despite the circumstances), they still balk at seeingthe truth. I show them the facts; they oppose me with their faiththe faithfulbelief that the Israelis are killers of children.SWC: Are there are people in France 2 who support your approach?PK: Yes. There are also those free spirits who cannot openly express supportfor fear of losing their jobs. Over the years, these courageous peoplehave helped me by sending multiple damning documents, including a 2002fax from cameraman Talal Abu Rahma to the network retracting his originalallegations. This retraction, along with the France 2 footage and theimages from Charles Enderlins 50 seconds, created an iconic tale that wasnever made public.SWC: Would you tell us more about these famous images from France 2?PK: Three days after the events, Talal Abu Rahma made a sworn statementto the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza, in which he certified

the broadcast, the news director of France 2 said on live TV that to maintaintheir code of ethics and respect viewer sensitivity, they had decided to showimages of bullets reaching the father and child. Then, for many years,Charles Enderlin and France 2 colleagues claimed that they held the sceneshowing the death agony of the child. This information was repeated andpromulgated so people could legitimately intimidate all those who intendedto question the story of France 2. But in October 2004, three French journalistsDenis Jeambar, Daniel Leconte, and Luc Rosenzweighad accessto these images, and they revealed that the images contained no scenes ofagony, that the dead child did not appear at the end of images, and thatthese images contained many scenes already shown. It is when this informationwas revealed to me by one of the three journalists that I realized wedefinitely were right: it had indeed been well staged. Then, in November2007, when France 2 was forced to show its 27 minutes to the Court ofAppeal of Paris, it was observed not only that those 27 minutes was morethan 18 minutes, meaning that 9 minutes of images had disappeared, butalsoand even more importantthat the child was alive and well at theend of the images from France 2; he raised and even bent his elbow in avery controlled way and turned his head toward the camera after CharlesEnderlin declared him dead. Viewing the images was a real turning point:we had absolute proof that France 2 had no evidence to support its andEnderlins assertions and that he and the network and its staff lied for overseven years on the content of these images.SWC: For many years, you were not supported by the State of Israel. Canyou tell us more about this strange aspect of the al-Dura affair?1PK: The death of Mohammed al-Dura was the first media terroristattacka real Pearl Harbor operation! The Israelis have had 12 years tounderstand it, but unfortunately they did not. Once the images had beenbroadcast by television stations around the world, some Israeli officialshave admitted the possible accidental responsibility for their soldiers.Thereafter, they gradually became aware of the masquerade, but, thinkingthat the damage was done and nothing could be done to fix it, they chose toignore this episode. They did not understand that even if they wanted toforget, the whole world would remember; they did not realize the globalimpact of this report. The Israelis have not acknowledged that bin Ladenhas used these images in clips to recruit for the attacks of September 11.They did not understand that Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl wasmurdered in Pakistan to avenge the death. They were not interested instamps with the effigy of the small Mohammed that have been printed inmany Muslim countries . . . Then, suddenly, they finally woke up in March2012, when Mohammed Merah murdered Jewish children in Toulouse,France, to, in his own words, avenge Palestinian children killed in Gaza.SWC: Do you think the Israelis have actually realized the scope and importof the media war that is conducted against them?PK: Im not really sure, because I think they have not grasped that this is areal war, one requiring visions, strategy, and consistency to conduct. Sincethe creation of the State of Israel, Arab countries have tried to destroy itwith conventional wars (56, 67, and 73). They failed. The Arabs continuedtheir attempts to destroy the State of Israel through terrorism andbombs exploding everywhere in the country, but the Israelis have also wonthis war. After two failures, noting that the force and terror did not work,the Arabs have attempted for almost 15 years to destroy the legitimacy of

image of the State of Israel is continually degraded in the world. This mediabarrage results in an expensive defeat for the Israelis, not only economicallyand where such initiatives proliferate but also at the strategic, military, andeven human levels. Indeed, when Israel lost the media battle, it lost thediplomatic battle, and thus is impeded from completing its military objectives.It has been observed that, in 2006, during the war in southern Lebanonagainst Hezbollah and in Gaza against Hamas, Israel had to halt itsmilitary operations in the wake of media manipulation that had a negativeeffect worldwide. The result is that Israels enemies were not removed andwere able to rearm to represent a renewed threat to Israeli civilians.SWC: How do you explain the inability of Israelis to defend themselves inthis new field of battle?PK: They should already realize that this is a real battlefield, an arena atleast as important as the physical land operation. The reality is that anIsraeli living in Israel does not really perceive the threat, as such long-timeresidents are only slightly confronted with unfriendly messages fromoutside. In contrast, we observe that new immigrants are more receptive tothis new dimension of the war.CSW: How to explain this reluctance to fight on the ground?PK: There is a great sense of national pride and patriotism in Israel, whichhas allowed the state to win all previous wars. Some say, Why and howpeople who do not live at home can dictate to us what we need to do? Theanswer is simple: because this new form of warfare, which targets Israel, isnot conducted in that country but outside; even more important, because itis not really noticeable from inside the country.SWC: Finally, it seems that this case has become the fight of your life, hasit not?PK: This is a bit of an exaggeration, but it is true that this story took most ofmy time for over 11 years; I could remove myself only when I found thatthe State is one tough opponent, but I stayed active and focused because theimage of the little Mohammed is one of the most important of our time.In this image, the Islamist extremism at war against the West is used. Itrefers to the worst antisemitic accusations from the Middle Ages, especiallythe one accusing Jews of killing Christian children to drink their blood. Forpeace in the world, we must restore the truth. So that one day Israel and itsneighbors can be reconciled, we must first stop the Arabs belief that Jewskill Arab children for pleasure, as that image might suggest.SWC: Do you think it worthwhile to devote 11 years of your life to thisfight?PK: I did not think it would take so long to make this evidence so easy tounderstand, I admit. With hindsight, I regret having waited so long for supportfrom the State of Israel, but I think this fight is very important and itwas worthwhile to conduct. The story of the false death of little Mohammedwas the starting point for the strategic media demonization of Israel in theearly days of this century. I imagined that the fight against the al-Dura lieshould gather all truth-loving democrats, Jewish or not. Al-Dura is in thehistory books in the world. It is the job of our time to ensure that this falseaccusation against the Jewish people is corrected for future generations.*Philippe Karsenty is the founder of the media credit rating agency Media-Ratingsand the deputy mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine. Interview conducted by the SimonWiesenthal Center, Paris. http://www.wiesenthal-europe.com; csweurope@compu

Anti-Israeli Theater at Avignon

Micheline B. Servin*. . .Let no one object that it is theater and as in literature it sometimes justifies theintolerable. One highlight marked [Avignon's] 66th Festival as an implicit form of subprogramming. What was it? Anti-Israelism.Watching similar productions in 2011, I just assumed this low art performance would gomuch further, that common sense would prevail; it was underestimating the anti-Israeli themeHamas and its supporters prefer the term Zionism and refuse to recognize Israel, or antisemitism, orunderestimate ethical and aesthetic responsibility of theater people and their knowledge of theproblem. I kept the announcement and free necklace handed out at the hall entrance at the School ofArt, -- It read: Cast Lead- Jerusalem.Why the title Cast Lead-Jerusalem? Because military names are cynically poetic. Cast Lead-- Israel's 2009 military incursion was named for the nursery rhyme Chaim Bialik--and Hanukkah

Both musicians met in Jaffa and since 2004 have worked together, as the Winter Family. Duringthe 2008 Israel and Jerusalem dual celebrations, the experimental duo recorded produced piecesfrom Radio France workshops. Afterwhich time, they filmed, recorded, selected and written thetheatrical performance [Cast Lead].Its description as a "documentary" is evidence of semantic and linguistic ignorance [furtherevidenced by the subtitle] described as "a journey hallucinating in an emotional dictatorship."According to Le Robert [dictionary] hallucinating is defined as crazy, imaginary perceptions.Indeed, this keeps a perverse relationship with reality, like that of any good anti-Israel, antisemiticright: not a challenge to the policy of the state, but of its very existence, although recognized by UNsince 1948.Jerusalem Cast Lead, design, recordings, stage and set design of the Winter Family,broadcasting, sound and video Xavier Klaine, Ruth Rosenthal at the School of Art.A basic design: a screen for the projection distance of the many videos, son on which arehung small Israeli flags defining the scenic area, obviously supposed included Israel, the perimeterwill be increased; one of the few "games" with the rise of an Israeli flag to a pole. Dressed in awhite blouse and a navy blue pleated skirt or the uniform of the school stating that she describes isimposed for ceremonies and commemorations, Ruth Rosenthal conducts its business briskly, notvigorous the francs stops many addresses to the public. She poses as witness combining personalmemories as his laughter during a ceremony in memory of the six million Jews murdered in theHolocaust, the use of which she returns repeatedly with, inter alia:In 1942 or, say, threeyears before the end of the war and the liberation ofthe camps, Ben Gurion, the future PrimeMinister of Israel, had an idea: webuild a museum to the memory of the Holocaust. We'll callYad Vashem - ahand and a name [sic]. "In addition to this faulty translation (Yad Vashem,amonument, a name), errors that it is difficult to assume involuntary:anticipation roughforty years of the use of" Shoah "to name the plannedextermination European Jews, and tenyears for the construction of YadVashem passed by the Knesset in 1953 for this "emotional"it tacked onto the"dictatorship" that would be an intrinsic manipulation Israel and its leaderssince started even before its founding.She recites a litany of short extracts of UN resolutions from the 43rd (1 April 1948) to the 1860th (9January 2009) retaining only the convictions of the State of Israel after the Six Days War and theinterposition of supposed information, however no on attacks against Israel since its founding indeadly attacks against Israeli citizens far beyond the borders of the state (and the Olympic Games inMunich in 1972 by agents of Black September). However, it is eloquent on projections showing thearmy, varying the angles of the same ceremony for the illusion of multiplication; for one, she relatesthat three rockets fired from across the border, fell near a cemetery in a field or near a house,injuring a dog stayed outside. Therefore his relationship with sirens sounding and video projectionceremonies "in memory of the civilians and soldiers who died in wars and in the attacks" appear asstate manipulation to deceive and condition the population, and foreign opinion. It uses the selectionand editing images with comments, to divert, distort, lie, Klitschko propaganda against the state ofIsrael, she sings the anthem, Hatikvah, a liar and military state, a "Dictatorship", suddenly soundingthe glory of IDF holidays, with children indoctrinated and warlike aggression. A state of which heweaves illegitimacy responsibility sore area.In the Introduction, with views of Jerusalem, Ruth Rosenthal announces: "A spectacle ofsound, light and fireworks on the ramparts of the Old City Jerusalem celebrates 40 years ofreunification, and occupancy-- Happy Holidays."Lines are repeated from UN Resolution 48 [Establishing a Palestine Truce Commission]followed by "The Poles sing on the Mount of Olives; Come men from Lebanon . . . HassanNasrallah come . . .Great Eagle Hezbollah liberate Palestine." [The play] ends with stonethrowingand reference to the "war of stones," aka attacks against Israel --all part of the hallucinatory versionof the reality.Pamphlet forgers, Hezbollah, Hamas should have produced this "art"--not managers of

launching pro tourne Winter Family move via Brothers concert! ("Cycle of Sacred Music")annoucement re:The Seagull, (Arthur Nauzyciel, director).Freedom of expression is one thing, we know that it is up to the justification or glorificationof the murderer, terrorist--production and programming are quite another. The decision makers,producers and programmers, fall within the subsidized sector, so public service. Is it their mission ofopening the stage to the anti-Israel propaganda? To propagate and falsify facts? Since it is not evenchallenged --is hatred, demonization and hence the questioning of the Israeli state existence andantisemitism permitted in the name of art?Calling propaganda "documentary" is dishonest business on all fronts, and opposition togovernment policy is included. The artists ignore the writings of David Grossman, Amos Oz,Avraham B. Yehoshua who publish freely their fiercely critical opinions of domestic and foreignpolicies of their country, and whose protests and arguments are strangely silent in France--evenamong activist circles for the Palestinian cause. The artists ignore the context of death threats whenIsraeli Arab writer Sayed Kashua made a US tour marking Israel statehood. They ignore Muslimdictatorships and how Palestinians are treated by fellow Muslims. They ignore the development ofIsraeli art and culture where Jews and Muslims work together as artists, musicians, dancers andperformers. They know how dictatorships seduce and arouse indignation-- and avoid extremevictimization of fellow Muslims such as Saudis or Syrians or Chechens? What of the identified lackof freedoms cited in UN reports, the status of women, minorities throughout Islamic nations. Thehydra with its multiple Semitic heads should not be pointing at Israel. Under the guise of fiction,another company lasted and it was not the only one.I Came, is the brainchild of Gaspard Delano and Yalda Younes with choreography byIsrael Galvn. (She is Lebanese and collaboration with the performer is from Humus)On the far wall is the projection of a map, yellow and fuzzy--what could be Palestine,without mentioning the date. On each side, a desk, behind which stands a garden Yalda Younes, andin court, Gaspard Delano speaking Arabic, translated it into French. According to the playsdescription, this is a conference on a parody. After the address on the terms agreed, it wasannounced that, in accordance with "His Majesty Albert II, King of the Belgians . . ." TheirHighnesses of Monaco, Lichtenstein and others in Europe, a peace plan accurate has beenestablished. After his lecture, peace will be effective. (In Arabic next).On the Belgian model, a single state; a President, a lower house elected by universalsuffrage, an upper house poll tax; three languages: Arabic, Hebrew and Walloon (the latter beingone of the few frills) and only one state, whose anthem is sung in Arabic; Spectators are invited toget up to greet him and they do happily--while the translator goes the flag, certainly white, thoughone state says what this conference is disclosed.The "occupied territories will be unoccupied," reserved for agriculture, a national soccerteam made up of players whose names are Arabic, Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews, and for travelfrom place of residence. Actually parody, innuendo that the disappearance of Israel sign peace.Another piece of anti-Israel propaganda, more devious, more cunning and able to attract "goodpeople" who are moved to false stereotypes of stone throwers fighting against tanks, tires obscurethe Palestinian murderers and resent not "Death to the Jews"!Yalda Younes announces that it will bring dance. She changes costumes: a man wearing avest and a curved black tight pants, boots floor of the soles and heels hooked, she dances aflamenco, while attitudes and not male, martial (as an arm tense as if she drew the revolver). Hispartner pales finally collapses. A unique design compared to the other man. However, given theconference and the preamble to the dance, while suggests that Israel would appear. Cheers wildly. Itshould not be fooled, this type of performance plow the political terrain, promotes acceptance of onestate and a hymn in Arabic, reflecting the position of Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and most Muslimnations as well as the French left particularly red and green.On July 25, Robert Serry, Middle East Envoy to the UN cancelled the East Jerusalemperformance of West-Eastern Divan Orchestra--an Israeli and Arab collaboration DanielBaremboim conductor, (Edward Said co-founder), because of Palestinian protests. The month

donation, 15,000, by the Council of Arab Ambassadors. (Arabs who attempt rapprochement withIsraelis face prison time or may be executed for treason). Not one speaks a word of this--let alonewrites of protest theater.What prompted Hortense Archambault and Vincent Baudriller to program anti-Israeli showsthat neglect criticism of government policy to challenge the very existence of a state and use the"art" for propaganda purposes via affect. The reasons may begin with Judeophobia, anti-colonialismleft amalgams, vindictive bias, lies of all kinds, to which should be added a neo-orientalisme(blindness to changes in the Arab world where Islamists come to power).It may be noted that these policy choices have arisen after admission to UNESCO inOctober 2011 of "Palestine" without the representative of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, as president, doVOTAT against at Unlike the United States, whose president, Barack Obama, decided to reducesubsidies to the UN body as a result of this admission voted on a non-observance of fundamentalstatutes.For its part, the Union of Drama critic awarded its prize for best foreign performance in"National Palestinian Theatre" Antigone of Sophocles, with a tower: the text of Sophocles wastranslated and adapted into French, with the insertion an extract of the last night on earth Darwish,by French director Adel Hakim, co-director of the theater Districts Ivry, since 1992, where hecreated the stage version in an Arabic translation of Abd el Rahman Badawi--the dramatic center ofthe Val-de-Marne is co-producer with the Palestinian National Theatre.Palestinians wear the national qualifier is not surprising. A French official support indefiance of history, the law of nations, the authority of the United Nations, however, though. Theduty of disobedience is still good to deny a Palestinian state prior to the recognition of the Israelistate.No chance.The Court of Honor, reading an X A portion of John Berger.In the Introduction, read by the author of the Prologue to the edition of his epistolary novelto one vote, made up of bundles of carefully arranged letters he would found in a wall in the cell 73of a former prison Susa (L'Olivier, Paris 2009); written by A, as Aida, the man liked X, Xavier,imprisoned following his conviction in a double life sentence for terrorism letters. The finding hintsthe cauli hada (pl of shaheed.), The martyrs, "Where are today and Xavier Aida, dead or alive, mayGod protect their shade. "What god? The shadow, the shadow cast by example.Reading it over, the author distinguished himself by attending Durban 2001 and his falseattacks against Israel, starting wars in the Middle East, launched BDS and the thunderous calls forboycott (In 2008, he refused to appear at the Paris Book Fair because of his guest: Israel) will sit inthe distance. Standing at a lectern, Juliette Binoche, dressed banal, reads letters Aida, a youngwoman who was herself imprisoned for political activity. They speak of love, shared memories,everyday life (an old barber whose modest shop has been razed by soldiers wounded caredclandestinely), or the refusal to allow them to marry . However, plants, colors, fruits, songs, musicalinstruments or names listed indicate the Arab Middle East. The location is accurate when itdescribes, in a reversal of the packets of letters (the novel was not read in its entirety), protestersrefugees in an abandoned factory unarmed Apache helicopters swooping over the village, theinvading tanks, women carrying before them, naked, hands and singing lips; tanks being turnedaround but one of the women was killed.We're not going anywhere . . . They cannot, even with their crap drones. Canwe easilyforget that the recipient of the letters has been convicted ofterrorism, valued on the groundsthat it is impossible for them to predict what we will do. Elements contribute to the fight againstheroizing a "they".The use of the indefinite pronoun is a refusal to name, recognize an identity, existence. Howevermany clues induce the enemy, "They" are the Israelis. All designed to inspire adherence throughcompassion for Aida, and consequently for its terrorist lover, especially since reading JulietteBinoche poured gradually into pathos and tearing. The third robber, theater space, SimonMcBurney, John Berger and faithful associate artist of the 66th Festival, reads the thoughts and

relocations that result in disruption and loss of means of production) and anti-Americanism in theabsolute, regardless of politics: "the empire of the United America is the greatest threat facing theworld today . . . "the slogans and emotional introduction of the law and the law, sublimatedterrorism. The attacks against the World Trade Center attacks against Jews, Israelis or the murdersin March, those of three French soldiers in Montauban, three children and a Jewish school teacher ata Toulouse Jewish school--committed by Islamist Mohamed Merah, who explained that he "wantedto avenge Palestinian children." These murders are justified.After antisemitic attitudes, amid anti-Israel, not surprisingly, a passage through theHolocaust, at least announced; the tower is known that reaches all the confusion, lies, bribery, whichthe Palestinians victims of genocide while growing demographics, and other "Israel-Nazi", toapartheid, South African concept whose jobs can not be by denying Israel its statehood.[Titled Withheld-- with Steve Cohen] Another performance forbidden to those under ageeighteen, I was blocked from attending despite requests and reported on the grounds of limitedspace. I tried to buy a ticket, to no avail. Two sessions fifty-five minutes a day, from 11 to 16 July(release 14), each for forty-two spectators in a space provided under the top of the main courtyard. Imet several people who have been invited, which loathe talking, one emerging with "Wind, it'snothing."I wanted especially to see Steven Cohen, self-described as South African white, Jewish andgay (he had moved to Lille). He takes pleasure relating that he sold newspapers from 1939 to 1942in a flea market. As a young French Jew he mentions neither the name nor the name or place ofresidence and exposes it only after careful research, after he found the heirs of the newspaper. Hespeaks of drawings which illustrate, by an ardent desire to live and "trivial descriptions thatdemonstrate the terrible trap, remarkably orchestrated, which falls on the Jews of France during theSecond World War," his family. This young Jew, anonymous, himself, an abyss in situations,however he continues practicing foolish telescoping.My grandparents escaped a racist regime that began with the repression anddiscrimination, and ended by the extermination of the various communities ofEasternEurope. But by coming to South Africa, they became what they despised, that is to say, culturallydominant oppressors who took advantageof an unjust political system. For me it is a betterbase to attack Zionist policies because it also calls "Zionist Jew", stating: "It is too easy tomisinterpret the slogan" Jewish anti-Zionist. "I prefer to describe myself as aJew whohas huge problems with the political realities and the Zionistpractices of the State of Israel. Inany case, his next project "will build on theexample of the Jews became" in the system ofapartheid in South Africa all- powerful bosses, crushing black population enslaved andpowerless; [...] I'vecalled, not without criticism, "I am a Aske-Nazi '.Nothing in his statements to suggest that it has a minimal knowledge of Nazism, history (aword he abuses); However shortcuts, guilty amalgam simmering in her cauldron and he usesprovocation as it breathes, along with self-pity. "Aske-Nazi" devilishly like the obscene "IsraelNazi." Therefore, while ignoring it, do not put it next to South African Jews, lawyersanddoctors, who engaged alongside blacks fought against apartheid?Knowing that the production house The Indian Mail, was contracted to provide the videorecording shows the Festival, I asked to see a DVD. The next day, the head of the press office said,"The artist refuses, not the director--the artist." Also, I was looking for sheet room; -- unlike all theothers, it was not freely available to the press office. I learned that only spectators possessed. Imanaged to find one: on the front, an extract of the interview with Steven Cohen contained in thepress release; the back, playing a board representative, on one side, an ad for rat poison, the other aslogan on the harmfulness of rats, rodents drawn on the two aspects that separates the center, a"yellow star "including" Jewish "in black Gothic letters; a way tobuffer Nazi administration recentlyinked red at the bottom. Lined a trivialization disclosure Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda outlet historyand tilted in the arts: the poster is numbered and "signed by the artist," Steven Cohen, according tothe formula used to market the art; Prior to the collection, speculation, reserved for the happy few.

Although he had not attended a session of ____ . . . I provide a few items that have beenreported to me and corroborate articles. Space in the dark, not visitors to the Palace of the Popes Arow of spectators seated on two sides at right angles in a narrow rectangular cage, surroundingspace, in which rats and lit with small lights are riding (the curious who rises seen that each is stuckin a yellow star), then go into a laid down structure. Steve Cohen from completely white makeup, a"yellow star" on the forehead, chest tight in a white corset, a plastic shell on sex, extravagantcothurni metal feet, walking with the aid of two sticks. At various times, Jewish songs, snatches ofspeech (Hitler, Petain). Equipped with a small camera that transmits images onto a screen, theperformer shows the inside of his mouth and Nazi insignia placed on the edge of a well. Are alsoprojected videos (the mouth of a snake swallowing a rat), two pornographic (female gender,introduction of a reptile and a fish), then a few pages of the newspaper whose enigmatic as he spokeby putting forward strong; they follow each other very quickly. He gives to watch, played on twoiPads attached to the soles of buskins, sitting in front of a few spectators, legs apart."I closed my eyes, I had her crotch and sex in plastic in front of me," says myinformant.I just obscene, it is true that I saw the second performance ofSteven Cohen, Vedne: LeBerceau de lhumanit (The Cradle of Humankind).Under that name, it was classified as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO (1998) an areatens of kilometers from Johannesburg; scientists from various disciplines have found the first tracesof human life dating back to three million years there. Tours are available, tourism grows near oneof the sites. In the film room, we read that along with his nurse Steven Cohen was allowed to film inthe Sterkfontein and Swartkrans sections and they were "deeply shocked". The material for theshow Sixty Minutes, silent but not silent in a sterile white space; a huge gray ball landed on theground in the garden, in the center a baroque angel flying off. On a court suspended a movie screenis projected, showing one of the sites at the same time means that traditional music, and a crowd ofblacks than we can suppose dancing, which is detached, the American plan, the image of an elderlywoman whose breasts hanging on the incongruous skirt with a white tutu, the rigid pleated his handsagainst each other. Against a background of techno music, Steven Cohen among fully masked inwhite, perched on breathtaking cothurni, sex in a shell; an extravagant creation itself.Following sequences. He will look his nurse wife filmed American plan. With careful andaffectionate gestures, it helps to walk to the center, where she remained alone on the room a softlook that seemed to translate discomfort. After a few seconds, the display reverts to the audiencevoyeurs, that of a very old woman, the body weighed down and exhausted, whose white skirt hidesnothing of anatomy, and provides key grotesque; resurgence of human zoos. I noticed that he waswearing white corset could be the top of the tutu. 'Aesthetic' element that contradicts the will todenounce the evils of whites in South Africa he claims superficially transposed: anthropometricmeasurements using a high fathom; map projected on the floor (Nomsa Dhlamini, year of birth:1921 Origin: Swaziland name) identity; ropes ankles and wrists. If the "art" waters down even morethan the chilly history books, what is it? Misappropriation and exploitation for a narcissistic "artist"by manipulating affect and guilt. A gospel that is. Steven Cohen guide her nanny to court, thenwalks away a little bias and a white elastic material, that part of him (the reverse would have beenmore significant), stretches a link between their mouths. Video projections of the two partners in thecaves of one of the listed sites, or other tree, repeatedly him in frightening creature carrying astuffed monkey skin on the back and the head (a fantasy Blanc), or monkeys in the trees. Could thisbe a response to "the white man's burden" of Kipling? He proclaims artist no basis for provocationat all costs. Singing La Marseillaise is played, the second verse is accompanied by the projection ofan anus opening and closing such a mouth, flanked by a sex toy. And it is as a letter in the mail; ahandful of spectators hand discreetly. A new video of monkeys, then a White wearing a long whitedress dancing a "Dying Swan." The two partners, who had dodged, returning to greet; simplicityNomsa Dhlamini, wearing a bathrobe, highlights the artifice, the fashion aesthetics of StevenCohen, his kindness and his teenage provocations fizzle as his statements: "For me, it is important tocreate [in the minds of viewers] a state of consciousness, a tension conducive to self-discovery.

belongs where body art comes, proves that a little ignorance as theater as plastic arts. Fear ofmissing the event greed to do? In any case, a dirty hit.Walking to reach the shuttle Vedne is thirteen miles from the city, I tangled against thejuxtaposition of the Marseillaise and an anus you. A very young black woman caught me and calledme, Saartjie Baartman recalling "the Hottentot Venus", quoted in the program, and how it had beenexhibited; She might have added that it was even worse because of scientists, including GeorgesCuvier, their successors and policies that refused to return the remains arguing that it was propertyof the national heritage, until it 2002 and the majority vote of a law authorizing the repatriation (astatement argued on respect for the human person and culpable errors of France accompanied him),although Nelson Mandela in 1996, had multiplied in applications official pressing so Sawtche, realname of the victim, rested in his native land, thereby giving a true lesson in philosophy.I tried to explain that the crimes of policies, statements of writers, intellectuals, merchantsand French scientists had nothing to do with the Marseillaise with what the song means andsymbolizes. Dialogue impossible, anger, obviously fueled by the performance, was invited. If, forexample, footballers, moreover with foreign names, had engaged in a stage to improvisationhammering with this song, the national anthem, the outcry would have been immediate.But in Avignon--nothing like that.The artists would be above the common lot? Under the umbrella of the provocation, theglorification of the ego and complacency in the ridiculous, the careless or ignorant of basicknowledge. Factor theater blindness, dispenser of dressing, one of the peculiarities of this Festival,more pronounced than in previous years. Shows an exception to this line were not the majority.*Micheline B. Servin has reported on theatre from the Avignon Festival since 1993. The following isexcerpted from 66e Festival dAvignon, lanti-Isral invit. et Arturo Ui. Les Temps Modernes, 2012/5 (n671) 140-206. Reprinted with author permission.

=abThe new antisemitism, a phenomenon raging throughout France, is marked by aggression towardJews and Jewish clergy, setting fire to synagogues, and hurling Molotov cocktails at Jewish schools.This article presents the actions that the BNVCA is doing to combat this escalating, and alarming,threat.Key Words: Antisemitism, anti-Israeli, anti-Zionism, France, Islamic, Jewish@Every time the situation in the Middle East gets explosive, there is a rise in anti-Jewish acts inFrance. The Bureau National de Vigilance Contre lAntismitisme (BNVCA) was founded in 2000for the purpose of identifying the emerging new antisemitism and was spreading all overFrance. Synagogues were set on fire, Jews were attacked, rabbis were assaulted, Jewish schoolswere firebombed.The BNVCA considers that incitement to hatred of Israel is the fundamental source ofantisemitism and provocation of anti-Jewish acts. To make matters worse, this hatred is relayed bythe media, political figures, elected officials, and intellectuals and academics, who engage inexacerbated Palestinism.From its beginnings, the BNVCA has benefited from moral and financial support from theSimon Wiesenthal Centre, which served as the example for the BNVCAs preventive actions andand strong responses to provocative actions.The BNVCA has multiple and rapid sources of information: police services, journalists, victims,or witnesses of antisemitic acts. This is how the BNVCA was able to alert police services. Thepublic prefers to turn to the BNVCA because we react promptly, we are in the field, and we havedirect relations with political authorities, police chiefs, and even magistrates. We have a strong

The BNVCA has also set up a hotline and developed forms that people could use to filecomplaints without going to the police station. Judicial authorities agreed to accept these documentsas formal complaints. Victims or witnesses primarily indicated people of North African or subSaharan origin as perpetrators of attacks.Statistics have been collected, showing that the most serious and most frequent antisemitic actswere committed in municipalities governed by officials from the French Communist party.Presidents of Jewish community organizations in those municipalities met under the auspices of theBNVCA. They brought abundant documentation of pro-Palestinian municipal activities,including trips to what was described as Palestine and to twin-city associations with Palestinianvillages, along with stigmatization of Israel and the Israeli Defense Forces (Tsahal), and so on.The BNVCA does not minimize any act. We communicate on acts big and small because wethink the public should be aware. If one forewarned man is worth 2, we think a Jew who isforewarned is worth 10.Today, the antisemite clich JEWS & SUCCESS led to the murder of Sebastien Sellam by hisenvious Muslim neighbor. The clich JEWS AND MONEY drove the Gang of Barbarians tomurder Ilan Halimi. And the clich JEWS KILL PALESTINIAN CHILDREN was at the root of theanti-Jewish killings in Toulouse; the Merah phenomenon should be taken seriously because Araband Muslim youths made him their hero. According to reports we received on what is happening inhigh schools, he is their role model. It seems they are grateful to him for committing his act, thoughit was disgraceful.Antisemitism has become commonplace. For some people, Jews have no value as human beings.The BNVCA is constantly vigilant and works with local officials and members of the centralgovernment, as well as Muslim associations that had the courage to condemn radical Islam.The most recent threat registered by the BNVCA was via the Internet and Facebook against thechief rabbi of France. The French government is not antisemitic; the powers that be are trying towipe out the phenomenon. We think this new antisemitism will come to an end when the false,harmful Palestinian propaganda stops.Though some far-right antisemites that might in fact be guilty of desecrating cemeteries,defacing property with swastikas, or running negationist websites, they are not the ones that burnedour synagogues, threw firebombs into Jewish schools, assaulted our children in the streets, on buses,and in public schools. They arent the ones murdering our children.The illegal boycott campaign against Israel, which contributes to propaganda aimed atstigmatizing the Jewish State, is one of the primary sources of antisemitism.The organization of boycotts is prohibited under French law. The BNVCA advised the Prefect ofthe Seine-Saint-Denis banlieue to take legal action in the Administrative Court to stop communesfrom contributing government subsidies to pro-Palestinian associations. Several communes wereconvicted by the court. The France-Palestine association was ruled ineligible for public subsidies onthe grounds that its aims are political, not charitable. This case established a precedent, followed bythe Administrative Court of Marseille that delivered the same ruling.The BNCVA initiated the fight against the boycott. We did it from the very beginning, as soonas it first came onto the national scene. The BDS movement and organizations that promote theboycott have substantial means. They have many employees and propaganda tools that require hugefinancial resources; in fact, this makes us wonder where they get their funding. The boycott hits allsectors of activity: agriculture, industry, services, culture, academia . . . We saw wild hordes invadepublic places and supermarkets, weve seen commandos disturbing the peace. At first they were metwith general indifference, but then business owners and law enforcement started to react morevigorously. The boycott is not a form of political expressionit is illegal, classified as an offensein our penal code. A boycott is authorized only when it emanates from international resolveexpressed through the UN Security Council, as was the case for the former Rhodesia, apartheidSouth Africa, Iraq under Saddam Hussein, and now Iran. All other acts of boycott are punishable bylaw. We strive to enforce respect for the rules and laws of the French Republic. This is why we areand will remain determined and committed: any and every boycott action will be forcefully pursued.

the Toulouse affair in 2012. Another example is the controversial question on humanitarianmedicine included in an exam given at Oberlin to medical students. The pro-Palestinian professor atOberlin put a question on the exam that concerned civilian victims of bombing in Gaza, giving theimpression that Tsahal was guilty.If they are political figures, their responsibility is heightened when they disregard the laws of theRepublic; this is why French criminal law punishes them more severely. In fact, it is quite surprisingto see certain intellectuals or politicians promoting the anti-Israel boycott when they opposedboycotts of Iraq or Irantheyre the same ones who demonstrate against Arab dictators but neverpromoted a boycott against them. Double standard: thats the rule of the boycotters. Fighting theboycott has become a major mission in the combat that defends the values of the Republic, and wewill always be in the forefront of this fight.Nor do we do not make any distinction between the mighty and the meek. We do not sparethose that life has rewarded; their guilt is greater. The defendants may be nobodies or high-profilepersonalities such as Stphane Hessel, the author of Indignez-vous (Get Angry!). The Paris branch ofthe Ecole Normale Suprieure canceled a colloquium-debate on Hessel after strong protests byJewish associations.We were under pressure from all sides to keep us from suing Mr. Hessel, but we didnt give inand were indignant at the attempts to hold us back. Is Mr. Hessel above the law? Is there one systemof justice for those at the bottom another for those on high? Certainly not! Those are not ourconvictions or the values of the French Republic. If Mr. Hessel breaks the law, he has to answer forit.And when we heard that a colloquium advocating disregard for the law was organized in one ofour most prestigious schools, we thought: Its not possible! The principal must not be aware of it.This turned out to be true. We alerted her and this disgraceful event didnt take place. We aregrateful to the principal for her courage and determination.Being a bestseller doesnt mean a book is necessarily worthy of respect. Mein Kampf and TheProtocols of the Elders of Zion are still selling by the millions; it doesnt make them works ofquality or morality. Unfortunately, in our troubled times people are avid for these novels ofhatred. Thats how it started in 1M3!and thats the problem. People easily give in to threats andpressure. But thats blackmail, which is threat under duress. It is illegal, discriminatory, andintolerable.Anyone who would seeks to boycott Israel would have to sacrifice nearly all high-tech productsand a good share of medical discoveries. The BNCVA will never accept the moral pretentions ofpeople who promote terrorism, hostage taking, and all the rest. Whats more, Palestinians are firmlyopposed to this boycott, which is totally against their interests. Those do-gooders never objectedto the sale of products made by real slaves or exploited children. These boycotters indulge inselective indignation. They should be unmasked. Were working on it.Consider the handling of Sodastream, the top firm worldwide in its field. A Sodastream sodamaking machine offered to prizewinners on a France Tlvisions show would not be a matter ofconcern except for the fact that its an Israeli brand. The France Palestine Solidarit associationcomplained, insisted, and got the product removed from the broadcast. The BNVCA intervened,contacted France Televisions management, and let them know that a lawsuit will be filed for illegalboycott. Immediately, the Sodastream advertisement is back on screen.This filthy boycott campaign disturbs the peace and that is why we fight it with all our might. Itinevitably leads to dangerous excesses; the affair of the singer, model, and actress Vanessa Paradisis a sorry illustration. Laurent Ruquier reported on his radio broadcast that Paradis had beenthreatened; we know she was harassed with complaints and threats. We can understand that parentsare sensitive to this type of threat and want to keep their families out of harms way. But it is up tosociety to prevent such excesses.Recently, we won a decisive victory over organizations that we had taken to court. In an attemptto hamper the march of justice they took the cases to appellate court or, one step further, submittedthe Question Prioritaire de Constitutionnalit (prior question of constitutionality) to the Conseil

The BNVCA is also combatting a practice of the same pro-Palestinians that, with the help ofCommunist municipal governments and left and far-left associations, organize rallies in support ofPalestinian prisoners, and raise Palestinian terrorists to the rank of honorary citizens. This is a crimeof apology for terrorism. The BNVCA has brought lawsuits against municipal officials who vote infavor of these motions. It observes that associations like MRAP (Movement against Racism and forFriendship between Peoples) and the Ligue des Droits de lHomme (Human Rights League), whichsupport this lobbying, remain silent in the face of massacres of Copts in Syria and Muslims inBurma, Syria, and Mali, and are indifferent to the fate of 14-year-old girls rounded up and corralledto serve the unbridled sexual appetites of Syrian opposition fighters.We must give credit to the president and the minister of the interior for their forthright publicdeclarations that anti-Zionism is the mask of antisemitism. These statements were confirmed by thepresident of the National Assembly on the occasion of the official colloquium organized by theBNVCA at the National Assembly.*Sammy Ghozlan, an honorary police commissioner and the president of the Bureau National de VigilanceContre lAntismitisme, says the resurgence of anti-Jewish acts is evident. He calls on public authorities thatmust, in his opinion, do more.

French Antisemitism during the Dreyfus Affair

Robert S. Wistrich*The Dreyfus Affair is rightly considered as a significant turning pointin the history of modern European antisemitism, as well as constituting amajor internal issue in French society and politics. Indeed, the power struggleover the essence of the Republic, which divided France between 1897and 1900 into opposing camps of Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards, wasprofoundly influenced by the reemergence of a Jewish Question, deliberatelyfostered by theantisemites. In addition to daily antisemitic publications like Edouard Drumonts La Libre Parole,the Catholic La Croix,Henri Rocheforts LIntransigeant, and Jules Guerins LAntijuif, therewere also mass-circulation newspapers like Le Petit Journal that unconditionallysupported the anti-Dreyfusard position, which remained dominantin most of the French press. Equally, at the height of the Affair, there was arash of more short-lived antisemitic pamphlets and weeklies like the illustratedPsst!, containing the toxic antisemitic caricatures of Frances leadingcartoonists, Jean-Louis Forain and Caran dAche (Emmanuel Poire). Furtherreinforcing the anti-Dreyfusard camp (who fervently opposed any revisionof Alfred Dreyfuss conviction for spying) were the noisy activities ofa number of populist antisemitic leagues and associations that encouragedstreet demonstrations, violent agitation against Jews, and vicious denunciationsof leading Dreyfusards.Ever since 1889, when Frances best-selling antisemitic journalistEdouard Drumont had founded La Ligue Antisemitique Francaise, theleagues had become a potent force for collective mobilization and calls foraction against the Jews and the Republic. Popular Catholicism often provided

the Abbe Garnier. This organization was backed enthusiastically by the Vatican and many Frenchbishops. Significantly, the head of the JeunesseAntisemite et Nationaliste, Edouard Dubic, belonged to Garniers militantCatholic League. Dubic advocated an all-out war against the Jews as part ofhis anti-Dreyfusard agitation. The marching song of the JeunesseAntisemite began: Lets drive out the Yids by clubbing them on the head.Dubic was also closely linked to Jules Guerin, one of the most effectiveantisemitic organizers in France during the Dreyfus Affair, who hadestablished his own well-organized antisemitic league in 1897.Guerin focused his offensive on Jewish monopolies, Jewish bankers,and financial speculators in general, using antisemitism as a favoredweapon of social struggle while appealing to working-class anti-clericalism.By July 1898, his organization already included over 10,000 activists,attracting Catholic militants, Bonapartists, and Royalists as well as someBlanquist socialists. Guerin was even able to manage Edouard Drumontsentry into the French parliament following the May 1898 elections held inthe capital of French Algeria. These elections proved to be a triumph for theFrench antisemites. The new mayor of Algiers, Max Regis, was a 26-yearoldlaw student and son of a recent Italian immigrant. In January 1898,Regis had called upon a cheering Parisian mob to water the tree of freedomwith the blood of the Jews. He would unscrupulously use his office toincite and unleash pogroms in Algeria during the Dreyfus Affair, in whichJewish stores were looted, Jewish women criminally assaulted, and severalJews killed.In metropolitan France itself, following the publication of ZolasJAccuse, during January-February 1898 there were no less than 70antisemitic demonstrations or riots across the country. Violent disturbancesoccurred in all the large and medium-size cities, including Paris, Marseille,Lyon, Bordeaux, Montpellier, Clermont-Ferrand, Nantes, Rouen, Tours,Dijon, Dieppe, and Nancy. The rallying cry, Death to the Jews, swept thecountry and the antisemitic mobilization affected all regions and socialstratathe aristocracy, the mercantile classes, the petty bourgeoisie, peasants,workers, intellectuals, and students, as well as the ranks of the army.

and the Church. Some of the more extreme pamphlet literature specificallydemanded the expulsion of Jews, or even their murder. More common,however, were calls for the removal of Jews from army officer ranks, fromthe State administration, politics, and the Academy. Such motions had beendebated in the French parliament since 1895, attracting considerable backingfrom deputies without winning majority support.A disturbing insight into the escalating potency of French antisemitismat the time of the Dreyfus Affair is provided by the many subscriptions tothe Henry Memorial in 1899a fund established by Edouard Drumonts newspaper to supportthe widow of Colonel Henry, the leading fabricator of General Staff documents against Dreyfus.Henry had committed suicide in August 1898 following his exposure as a forger. Among the 25,000subscribersto the memorial fund were at least 300 members of the lower clergy, more than 1,000army officers (including four generals), representatives of the educated professional strata, andmany ordinary Frenchmen and women from all sections of society.

The attached comments of the subscribers were full of the most malevolentantisemitism. One group of officers declared its impatience to try outa new type of gun on the 100,000 Jews in the country; other subscriberssuggested that Jews should be pierced to death with needles, stewed in oil,or circumcised up to the neck; several contributors openly advocated thatJews should be torn to pieces, tortured, or boiled aliveespecially the JewishDreyfusard politician Joseph Reinach (nicknamed Boule de Juif), who,along with Captain Dreyfus and Emile Zola, was a special target of mobhatred. The Henry Memorial materials, like much of the antisemitic presstirades, tracts, pamphlets, caricatures, songs, poetry, postcards, and childrensgames, display an unmistakably eliminationist antisemitism to whicheven distinguished intellectuals were not entirely immune.Fin-de-si`ecle French intellectual Judeophobia had multiple sources andcontributed substantially to the explosive divisiveness of the DreyfusAffair. Much of this literature can be seen as an anti-modernist backlashagainst the egalitarian and libertarian ideals of the Great French Revolutionof 1789 and the edicts of Jewish emancipation that had accompanied itsadvance. The oldest layer in this hostility was the powerful Catholic strandof anti-Judaism epitomized by the aristocratic Gougenot des Mousseaux,whose Le Juif, le jud aisme et la judasation des peuples Chretiens (1869)had been specifically blessed by Pope Pius IX. Like the Catholicantisemites of the Dreyfus Affair who followed him, des Mousseauxdenounced a so-called Jewish conspiracy against Christendom, the Jewishdomination of Christian culture, and the efforts of Jews in alliance withFreemasonry to seize the levers of political power in France. In the samespirit, from the 1880s onward, other Catholic publicists would repeatedly

attribute social and cultural trends they deplored (growing secularism, atheism,materialism, free-thinking liberalism, and aesthetic modernism) toJewish machinations. La Croix,organ of the Catholic Assumptionist religiousorder (which in 1890 proudly called itself the most antisemitic newspaperin France), led the press campaign to brand Jewry as insidiouslysubverting the Catholic identity of France.Edouard Drumont, the new pope of French antisemitism, built onthis traditional foundation in his incredibly successful book La FranceJuive (1886), which sold more than 100,000 copies. It rapidly catapultedhim into leadership of the antisemitic movement and was repeatedlyreprinted. Drumont blended intense nationalism (La France aux Francais),anti-capitalist ressentiment, and pseudo-scientific racism with populistCatholicism in a potent brew of antisemitic poison that greatly envenomedthe Dreyfus Affair. A skilled journalist with an eye for scandal, gossip, andsensation, Drumont had shrewdly exploited the massive financial corruptionexposed by the Panama Canal scandal to launch his muckraking newspaperLa Libre Parole in 1892. Supported by street-brawling aristocrats like theMarquis de Mor`es, he was able to appeal to groups such as the Catholiclower clergy, the embittered lower middle class, disillusioned workers, students,and even someintellectuals in denouncing the plutocratic JewishRepublic, parliamentary corruption, and the inequalities of unbridled capitalism.

within the General Staff. His baneful influence extended both to the socialistleft and the radical right in France.Many socialists and anarchists proved sympathetic to Drumontstirades against the Rothschilds, usury, and so-called Jewish exploitation.On the traditionalist, monarchist, and radical right, Drumonts antisemitismwas even more attractive as a cultural phenomenon. It influenced importantfin-de-si`ecle writers like Alphonse Daudet, Paul Bourget, and Maurice Barr`es, who were concerned by the growing urbanization, industrialization,rootlessness, and moral decadence of French society. As Barr`es expressed,la formula anti-juive was destined to become the vehicle of all kinds ofgrievances in French societyarticulating the protest of the have-nots,the malcontents, and the declining social strata against the disorientingeffects of rapid social change. It offered a seductive national unionagainst the allegedly alien, cosmopolitan Jews who were allegedlythreatening Frances social cohesion and national identity.This socio-economic antisemitism, with its increasingly toxic mix ofelitist snobbery against parvenu Jews, sexual envy, and a very pricklynationalist sensitivity, was especially widespread among academics, jour nalists, playwrights, poets,and painters. It also flourished in the fashionablesalons of the aristocracy, so subtly depicted by the half-Jewish Dreyfusardnovelist Marcel Proust. Anti-Dreyfusard sentiment invariably drew on thisdiffuse reservoir of social prejudice, which was nourished by the conspicuouseconomic and cultural success of Jews under the Third Republic. Hostilitywas further fortified by the spread of scientific racial concepts inFrancebegun with the writings of Count Arthur de Gobineau and ErnestRenan in the 1850s, to be followed by the works of Gustave Le Bon,Vacher de Lapouge, and Jules Soury at the end of the 19th century. By thetime of the Dreyfus Affair, racist antisemitism was firmly embedded in theFrench Academy, politics, and popular folklore. Its trademark was therelentless depiction of Jews as members of a sinister, cunning, and corruptinferior race of dangerous social parasites. Already in 1886 Drumontsracist vision of Jewish France had sharply polarized the cowardly, venal,and materialistic Semites with the noble, heroic, and idealistic ChristianAryans. According to Drumont and his acolytes, the source of treason andother endemic Jewish vices lay in the blood. Hence, the nationalist intellectualMaurice Barr`es could confidently declare in 1898: That Dreyfus isguilty, I conclude from his race. Heredity, blood, and soil were decisive inthe minds of the new antisemites.A similar determinism pervaded the theories of the monarchist writerCharles Maurras, founder in 1899 of French integral nationalism and theAction Francaise movement. For the next half century Maurras and his discipleson the radical right would cultivate a veritable obsession with theDreyfus Affair, which they saw as both a symptom and the source ofendemic French political weakness, cultural decadence, societal anarchy,and sectarian divisions. Behind the French national crisis loomed the supposedlynoxious influence of four etats confederes within the State, whorepresented what Maurras stigmatized as anti-Francethe Jews, the Protestants,the freemasons, and the met`eques (foreigners). For the Catholic atheistand counter-revolutionary Maurras (who passionately hated the FrenchRevolutionary legacy of 1789), the Jews were the most dangerous of themultiple threats to French hierarchy, order, and authority. Hence, from theoutset antisemitism became for the Action Francaise the major pillar of its

ideology, born out of the Dreyfus Affair, remained astonishinglyconsistent through the next four decades, strongly influencing the antisemitismedEtat of the Vichy regime between 1940 and 1944. The indigenousMaurrasian tradition of French antisemitism undoubtedly helped to smooththe way for Vichys notorious Statut des Juifs (stripping Jews of their French citizenship in 1940),and provided an ideological justification forFrench government collaboration in the Nazi Final Solution.The Dreyfus Affair could never have gained such traction without themass hysteria induced by the spread of popular Judeophobic doctrines infin-de-si`ecle France. But at the same time it was also the Affair that transformedantisemitism into an issue involving mass politics and the future ofthe French Republic. The flood of anti-Jewish propaganda had both a shortandlong-term effect. It brought 23 avowedly antisemitic deputies to theFrench parliament in 1898, with another 40 more deputies willing to supportantisemitic proposals such as the abolition of the full civil and politicalrights of Algerian Jews. The antisemites now felt empowered to mountcampaigns calling for the boycott of Jewish shops, businesses, and departmentstores. They openly encouraged economic protectionism and severelimitations on foreign immigration, including that of destitute Jews fromEastern Europe. Moreover, during the Affair antisemites repeatedly demonstratedthat their appeals could transcend old cleavages between radicalsand conservatives, anti-clerical secularists and militant Catholics, the leftand the right. It seemed for the first time that antisemitic nationalism couldprovide a possible bridge between the aristocratic elite and the rootlessmob, between a corrupt political establishment and those on the social marginsbetween the haves and the have-nots.

As we have seen, the new antisemitism of the Dreyfus Affair was

highly receptive to racial concepts branding the Jews as ineradicably differentfrom non-Jewsthereby casting a long shadow over the core premisesof Jewish emancipation and assimilation. The antisemitic ideology in findesi`ecle France also left its mark on its opponents. One can, for example,find strikingly stereotypical portraits of Jews among some of the mostprominent critics and adversaries of French antisemitism, including AnatoleLeroy-Beaulieu, Leon Bloy, and Andre Gide, and leading Dreyfusards likeEmile Zola, Octave Mirbeau, Colonel Picquart, Fernand Labori, GeorgesClemenceau, and Jean Jaur`es. Indeed, many Dreyfusards were far from

defend the innocence of Dreyfus and to expose a gross injustice did bearfruit in the short term. Already under the Waldeck-Rousseau government inmid 1899, the French authorities began to clamp down firmly on the organizedantisemitic movement as a palpable threat to the Republican regime.Partly as a result of this repression, the anti-Dreyfusard Leagues suffered agradual eclipse after 1900 and the circulation of Drumonts La Libre Parolesteeply declined, as did the antisemitic representation in Parliament. Duringthe years of the Radical Republic (1902-1914), French antisemitism had clearly lost some of itsdirection and mass resonance, except for the militant Action Francaise.Nevertheless, the anti-Dreyfusard and antisemitic ideology born in thefin-de-si`ecle remained intact, to resurface with a vengeance during thepolitical crises of the 1930s.But what of French Jewry during these traumatic years of the DreyfusAffair? Given the central role of Jews in French nationalist ideology, it isimportant to note that in the 1890s the French Jewish community numberedonly about 110,000 (including the 30,000 Jews of French Algeria), no morethan 0.2% of the total population. Though well represented in banking,commerce, journalism, the free professions, and the Academy, Jews exertednothing like the huge economic and political power constantly attributed tothem by the antisemites. Nor, in cases like southwest France, Normandy, orBrittanywhere antisemitism clearly flourishedwas there the slightestcorrelation between its impact and the physical presence of Jews. Equally,during the Belle Epoque, it is difficult to see any significant link betweenantisemitism and Russian or East European Jewish immigration to France,which between 1880 and 1900 amounted to less than 10,000 Jews. In confrontingrampant antisemitism during the Dreyfus Affair, French Jews werein fact dealing with a mythical projection far more than a social reality theycould rationally influence or control. Their natural inclination (reflected inthe responses of the Dreyfus family) was to re-emphasize their enthusiasticFrench patriotism and loyalty to the Republican values that had emancipatedthem. For most Jews, this involved a continued commitment to theirintegration within French society and their consistent support for theauthority of a French State based on meritocracy, secularism, and the ruleof law.With regard to Dreyfuss conviction on charges of treason, things weremore complex. There was no solid basis before the summer of 1897 formost Jews or non-Jews to assume that there had been a major miscarriageof justice. Aside from the Dreyfus family itself, and the French-Jewishanarchist Bernard Lazare, whom Matthieu Dreyfus had hired to investigatethe case, exceedingly few doubts were expressed for the first two yearsabout Dreyfuss guilt. Lazare, who had himself published an important historyof antisemitism in 1894 (one by no means devoid of anti-Jewish stereotypes),had, however, been deeply shocked by the racist prejudice directedat the Jews during and after the first trial. Increasingly, he came to see inAlfred Dreyfus the tragic symbol of the oppressed, persecuted, andenslaved proletarian Jews from the ghettos of tsarist Russia to the mellahsof North Africa or the sweatshops of New York. This led him toward asharp critique of Jewish middle-class assimilation and to the adoption of arevolutionary brand of Jewish nationalism. Though this stance was not at all to the taste of theFrench-Jewish establishment, Lazare would nonethelessmaintain cordial relations with the Dreyfus family despite the ideological

outlook of political Zionism. Hence it is particularly ironic that the founderof the Zionist movement, Theodor Herzl, should have drawn some of theinspiration for his idea of the Jewish State from the Dreyfus case. Herzl hadpersonally witnessed Dreyfuss public degradation on January 5, 1895, inthe Ecole Militaire in Paris, and he never forgot the howls of the Parisianmob screaming Death! Death to the Jews! As he would put it a few yearslater, The Dreyfus case contains more than a miscarriage of justice; it containsthe wish of the vast majority in France to damn one Jew and throughhim all Jews. . . . Herzls stark conclusion in 1899 was that if the highlycivilized French people could come to such a pass, then there was littlefor Jews to expect from other, far less advanced nations. The only salvationfor Jews would be the return to their own nation and their establishment ontheir own ground and soil. In other words, a Jewish State!For the overwhelming majority of French Jews, such a radical conclusionwas unimaginable before 1914. Indifference to Zionism, however, didnot mean that Jews in France remained passive during the Affair. IndividualJews fought for Dreyfus, and some even engaged in duels to defend theirhonor. Moreover, the French Jewish press consistently and firmlyresponded to antisemitic and clerical provocations. At the same time, therewas some criticism within this press of the seeming impotence of the Consistory(Consistoire)the French Jewish Central Counciland of itsunwillingness to publicly proclaim Jewish solidarity with Dreyfus. SomeJews eventually came to see the Affair as evidence of the excessive subordi nation of the Jewishcommunal and rabbinical leadership to the FrenchState.The communal response of French Jewry to the Affair was one ofexcessive prudence rather than cowardice or passivity. As early as December1894, the chief rabbi of France, Zadoc Kahn, had created a clandestineComite de Defense contre lantisemitisme (Defense Committee AgainstAntisemitism), which included some prominent members of the Jewishcommunity. Though its activities remained secret, it tried to stem theantisemitic tide by discreetly assisting non-Jewish opponents of antisemitismthrough subsidies, propaganda materials, and legal advice. On the otherhand, neither the Consistory nor the Alliance Israelite Universelle ever publicly took the side ofDreyfus, nor did they represent French Jewry politically before the authorities. Communal leadersalways insisted on theofficial definition of Judaism as a religion and regarded the Consistory as apurely religious body. Such self-imposed limitations had a somewhat paralyzing effect on Jewishcommunal responses to antisemitism.Nevertheless, there were many individual Jews like Joseph Reinach,Bernard Lazare, Leon Blum, Daniel Halevy, Victor Basch, and the Natansonbrothers in the Dreyfusard ranks. There were also those like the formerprefect and editor of LUnivers, Isae Levaillant, who took a more activistview from within the Jewish community, insisting that Jews must supportDreyfus as part of a broader struggle for republican liberty and justice. In1907, Levaillant argued retrospectively that the Dreyfus Affair had been soimportant precisely because it had demonstrated that antisemitism negatedthe very essence of the French Republic. It represented much more thansimply a danger to one religious minority; as soon as the struggle becameone between antisemitism and the principles of the Revolution, Levaillantbelieved that it was inevitable that the anti-Jewish forces would be vanquished and banished. Hisoptimism in this regard proved premature,

right and the far left. Nor was Levaillant wrong to suggest that fightingantisemitism politically in France was more likely to succeed when it wasconducted in the name of the universal principles of liberty, equality, andfraternity, backed by the resources of a strong republican state.Nevertheless, this conventional wisdom, despite its obvious appeal, isfar from foolproof. It makes the Jewish fate largely dependent on the economic and politicalstability of the Republic at any given moment, themoral rectitude of its elites, and the cohesion of the French national identityunder rapidly changing conditions of globalization. Moreover, the oldDreyfusard rallying cry of defending universal human rights proved to be a hollow reed inprotecting Jewish lives, especially in 1940, after the militarydefeat of France.Today, things are still more complex, especially since the State ofIsrael has come under intense fire as an allegedly serial violator of humanrights. The mendacity and hypocrisy of such anti-Zionist charges has notprevented the new antisemites, many of them coming from the left, frominverting classic Dreyfusard rhetoric in the most Manichean fashion. Intheir eyes, it is the virginally innocent Palestinians who are invariably anda priori the absolute victims of the contemporary Middle East conflict.Israel and the Jews are, however, dogmatically represented as ruthlessoppressorsthe contemporary incarnation of brute military force, raisondetat, fascism, racism, and colonialist oppression. This anti-Israel rhetorichas cast a shadow over the axiomatic Dreyfusard identification of the causeof human rights with resistance to racism and Jew-hatred. Truth and justice,it would appear, are no longer so blindingly obvious as they seemed toEmile Zola at the height of the Dreyfus Affair.*Robert S. Wistrich is the Neuburger Professor of European and Jewish History atHebrew University of Jerusalem and directs the Vidal Sassoon International Centerfor the Study of Antisemitism. The preeminent scholar of antisemitism history, hisrecent books include A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to theGlobal Jihad (Random House, 2010) and From Ambivalence to Betrayal: The Left,the Jews and Israel (University of Nebraska Press, 2012).

BIBLIOGRAPHYBirnbaum, Pierre. The Antisemitic Moment: 1898. Paris: Fayard, 1998.Delmaire, Danielle. Antisemitism and Catholicism in the North during the DreyfusAffair. Lille, France: Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1991.Joly, Bernard. Nationalists and Conservatives in France, 1885-1902. Paris: LesIndes savantes, 2008.Poliakov, Leon. The History of Antisemitism: Suicidal Europe 1870-1933 .Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985.Sorlin, Pierre. The Cross and the Jews 1880-1899 . Paris: Grassat, 1967.Wilson, Stephen. Ideology and Experience: Antisemitism in France at the Time ofthe Dreyfus Affair. Oxford, UK: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1982.Wistrich, Robert S. A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the GlobalJihad . New York: Random House, 2010.

Anti-Zionism and the Iranian Press

Rusi Jaspal*

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, anti-Zionism has remained an important

ideological building block of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This paperexamines the manifestation of anti-Zionism in the English-language Iranianpress in order to elucidate how this ideology is exported to an internationalreadership. The paper presents the results of an empirical study of two leading English-languageIranian newspapers: The Tehran Times and Press TV. The study uses Critical Discourse Analysisand draws upon tenets of Social Representations Theory and the notion of delegitimization fromsocial psychology. The following themes are outlined: (a) problematizing Israels right to exist; (b)unveiling the global Zionist conspiracy; and (c) leading global anti-Zionismthe declining Zionistregime. Both anti-Zionist and antisemitic representations are observable in the corpus. The paperidentifies three key components of the delegitimization process and addresses the implications ofoutgroup delegitimization for identity, emotion, and action.Key Words: Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, Critical Discourse Analysis, Iran,Israel, Media, Social RepresentationsThe Islamic Republic of Iran makes no secret of its fiercely anti-Zionistposition, which became an official state policy following the IslamicRevolution in 1979. Iran vocally supports Palestinian sovereignty over thewhole of present-day Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, and actively calls forthe destruction of the Jewish State. This position has drawn support fromother Arab and Muslim countries, and condemnation from much of theWestern world (Takeyh, 2006). There has been social sciences research intothe development and deployment of anti-Zionism and antisemitism in Iran(Jaspal, 2013a; Litvak, 2006; Shahvar, 2009). Much research in this areatends to focus upon the political functions of this ideological stance(Kuntzel, 2010; Takeyh, 2006).This paper makes a novel socio-psychological contribution to this field by examining textual socialrepresentations of Israel in the English-language Iranian press. More specifically, there is a concernwith how the English-language Iranian press exports Irans anti-Zionist policy beyond thenational and linguistic borders of Iran. Through the lens of Social Representations Theory(Moscovici, 1988), this paper\ examines how the press delegitimizes the State of Israel and how itlinguisticallynormalizes this prejudicial position for dissemination to an international readership.DELEGITIMIZATION AND SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONSThe concept of delegitimization was developed in order to describegroup categorization based on the negative traits of the outgroup that areused to deny the humanity of the outgroup and exclude it from dominantsociety (Bar-Tal, 1988). In his model of delegitimization, Bar-Tal (1990)identifies a series of ways in which outgroups can be delegitimized: (a)dehumanizationthe attribution of subhuman traits to a group (e.g., demon,monster, Satan); (b) trait characterizationthe attribution of negative characteristics to a group(e.g., liar, aggressor); (c) outcastingconstructsgroups as violators of pivotal social norms (e.g., murderers, thieves); and(d) political labelingentails the allocation of groups into socially stigmatizedpolitical categories (e.g., Nazi, imperialist). The process of delegitimizationtypically constructs the outgroup as posing some kind of threat to

argues that delegitimization can arouse highly negative emotions of rejection

among the ingroup, such as hatred, anger, fear, and disgust, which collectivelycan lead to aggression, violence, and even genocide against thedelegitimized outgroup. The Nazi persecution and systematic delegitimizationof the Jews, which culminated in the massacre of 6 million of them,clearly exemplifies how delegitimization can eventually lead to extremeaggression against outgroups (Bar-Tal, 1990).In order to understand how delegitimization can become a pervasiveand socially acceptable policy in a society, it is useful to draw upon SocialRepresentations Theory. The theory was designed to address humanresponses, both cognitive and rhetorical, to social information, by treatingseriously the information that circulates in society and the ideas in peoplesminds (Billig, 1988; Moscovici, 1988). A social representation is defined asa system of values, ideas, and practices regarding a given social object, aswell as the elaboration of a social phenomenon by a group for the purposeof communicating and behaving. Delegitimizing social representations ofIsrael in Iranian media provide the readership with a shared negative socialreality in relation to Israel, facilitating meaning-making and the correspondinglyappropriatesocial and psychological responses to it (Klein,2009).In his analysis of how representations are formed, Moscovici (1988)outlines the processes of anchoring and objectification. Anchoring reflectsthe categorization of unfamiliar objects through their comparison with anexisting stock of familiar and culturally accessible objects. For the readershipof the Iranian press to develop an understanding of Israel, it must first be named and attributedfamiliar characteristics, which facilitate communicationand discussion about it. For instance, it has been observed that IranianSupreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini frequently linked the IsraeliPalestinian conflict to the Jews historical exploitation of Muslims,thereby constructing Israel unambiguously as the villain in the IsraeliPalestinian conflict (Shahvar, 2009). This form of anchoring exemplifiesthe outcasting function of delegitimization, following the construction ofJews/Israel as violating social norms. Objectification is the process wherebyunfamiliar and abstract objects are transformed into concrete and objectivecommon-sense realities. In another media analysis (Jaspal, in press), ithas been observed that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad refers toIsrael in terms of a cancer. Israel is attributed a concrete essencethrough its objectification in terms of a metastatic disease, which musttherefore be destroyed. The processes of anchoring and objectification performboth descriptive and evaluative functions by elucidating the essenceof Israel (i.e., what it is) and its social value (i.e., how it should be evaluated).It is argued that a critical discourse analytical approach to anchoringand objectification can elucidate how these processes function discursivelyin the domain of text and talk (van Dijk, 1993).THE ZIONIST REGIMEZionism can be described as an ethnonationalist ideology, in whichIsrael is regarded as the expression of the Jewish peoples right to nationalself-determination (Beller, 2007, 226). Conversely, Iran has describedZionism as a racist, oppressive Nazi ideology (Takeyh, 2006), which clearlyexemplifies the processes of trait characterization and political labeling.After Iran withdrew its recognition of the State of Israel, it has systematicallyreferred to the Jewish State as the Zionist regime and Occupied

exist (Jaspal, 2013b). Indeed, Iran regards Israel as an occupation of Palestine,conversely depicted as Muslim land (Shahvar, 2009). In addition toits active dissemination of delegitimizing social representations, Iran is amajor funder of the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon and the Islamist partyHamas in the Palestinian territories. Both openly express their commitmentto the destruction of the State of Israel and are regarded as terrorist organizations by the UnitedStates and the EU (Palmer-Harik, 2004).There has been some academic insight into the nature of social representationsdisseminated by Iran, particularly in political and media discourses(Jaspal, 2013a; Litvak, 2006; Shahvar, 2009). Indeed, given thecensorship of the media in Iran, political and media discourses tend to be complementary, which islikely to produce coercive and uniform social representations.In an account of the motives underlying Iranian anti-Zionismand antisemitism, Jaspal (2013a) has argued that Iran deliberately disseminatesanti-Zionist and antisemitic social representations in order to: maintaintemporal continuity between the original tenets of the IslamicRevolution and the present-day Islamic republic; restore acceptance andinclusion in the Sunni Muslim Middle East; exhibit the influence and controlof Iran vis-`a-vis Jews and Israel; and construct Israel as a threat to befought by the Muslim world, demonstrating Muslim superiority.Although these socio-psychological motives may explain politicalrhetoric in Iran, it is unclear how they are disseminated in the EnglishlanguageIranian press.MEDIA REPRESENTATIONS OF ISRAELThere is a body of research that examines media practices, journalisticnorms, censorship, and the long-standing anti-Western position of Iranianmedia since the Islamic Revolution (Semati, 2008; Sweetser & Brown,2010). Researchers interested in Iranian antisemitism and anti-Zionism haveto some extent examined media representations of Jews and Israel, althoughthere tends not to be systematic engagement with media reporting in Iran(Litvak, 2006; Shahvar, 2009; Takeyh, 2006). This work has been useful inelucidating the relationship between political and media discourses in Iranand the ways in which Iran disseminates its anti-Zionist ideology to adomestic Iranian readership. There have been, however, few systematicmedia analyses focusing specifically on how the English-language Iranianpress represents Israel. Such analyses are key to understanding how Iranexports its anti-Zionist ideology to an international audience in order tobroaden its sphere of ideological influence beyond the national and linguisticboundaries of Iran. Moreover, given that sections of some ethno-religiousminority groups in Western countries (e.g., Muslims in Britain) mayfeel disillusioned with the mainstream press due to perceptions of biasand/or discrimination (Jaspal, 2011), it is possible that disaffected ethnoreligiousminority individuals may turn to alternative news outlets such asthe English-language Iranian press. Thus, these outlets may have someclout in shaping perceptions of Israel among some groups in society.To gain insight into the use of alternative news outlets, this studyexamines The Tehran Times and Press TV. The Tehran Times, a daily newspaperpublished in both print and online formats, was established byAyatollah Seyyed Mohammad Beheshti in 1979, following the IslamicRevolution. According to Beheshti, [T]he Tehran Times is not the newspaperof the government; it must be a loud voice of the Islamic Revolution and the loudspeaker of theoppressed people of the world.1 Although the

As stated on its website, The Tehran Times makes a special effort to publishreports on cultural and religious issues, in addition to various othersocial concerns. Although there are no independent data concerning the circulationof the outlet, The Tehran Times claims to be attracting readersfrom over 80 different countries and that its website has over 10,000 visitorseach day. Conversely, Press TV is a state-owned media outlet, whichforms part of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting Corporation. It waslaunched in 2007 to counter Western news reporting on global issues (inparticular, the Middle East). Thus, like The Tehran Times, it aims to providean alternative voice on global affairs and targets the West as itsprimary readership. The official vision statement of Press TV is to to heedthe voices and perspectives of the people of the world; build bridges of culturalunderstanding; encourage human beings of different nationalities,races and creeds to identify with one another; bring to light untold andoverlooked stories of individuals who have experienced political and culturaldivides firsthand.2 Like The Tehran Times, Press TV is similarly conservativein its ideological stance, and has been described as amouthpiece for Iran.Kleins analysis of the Islamic Republic News Agency examines howthe outlet represented the Iranian nuclear issue and the Israeli-Palestinianconflict during a two-month period in 2007 (Klein, 2009). Using a small,purposive sample of online articles, Klein examined the news framesemployed in Iranian and Israeli media reporting, respectively. The studywas comparative in nature, focusing upon convergences and divergences inmedia reporting in the two countries. It was found that the Iranian presstypically framed Israel as a savage regime and an enemy of Islam. It isnoteworthy that the sampling period was dominated by a speech deliveredby Irans Supreme Leader concerning the International Quds Day, theannual Islamic resistance day celebrated on the last day of Ramadan.Conversely, the present study focuses upon more habitual representationalpractices in order to elucidate how Israel is represented to an internationalreadership in the absence of politically polarizing events. It builds uponKleins work by acknowledging the tendency of the Iranian press to delegitimizeIsrael (see also Litvak, 2006), focusing specifically upon the discursiveelements of delegitimization. It does so to provide an important meansof understanding how subtler forms of linguistic expression can also resultin delegitimization, potentially leading to the uncritical acceptance of thisstance among the readership. Moreover, this study is concerned explicitlywith the formation of meaning in the media, that is, how delegitimizingsocial representations of Israel are actually created and subsequently disseminatedand encouraged in media reporting. It offers a socio-psychologicalapproach to textual social representations of Israel, bridging socialrepresentation, identity, and action. In sum, this study examines the discursiveaspects of delegitimizationthat is, how particular forms of languageare employed in order to delegitimize Israel, and how the processes ofanchoring and objectification are employed in media discourse to generatedelegitimizing social representations of Israel.METHODThis study presents a fine-grained Critical Discourse Analysis of asmall corpus of articles concerning Israel (Fairclough, 1995; van Dijk,

discourse, cognition, and power, and to bridge the epistemologicalpositions of social constructionism and realism. The technique providesinsight into how social reality is constructed in talk and text, acknowledgingthe possibilities offered by, and the potential constraints imposed by, socialpower relations (van Dijk, 1993). Finally, Critical Discourse Analysis helpsto reveal the rhetorical strategies for affirming and contesting social representationsof Israel.Critical Discourse Analysis was considered particularly useful due toits theoretical foci, which lie in describing (a) controlthat is, how groupsexert control over others through persuasion or by constructing their agendaas natural; (b) social cognitionnamely, that discourse can create andfeed into social representations; and (c) rhetorical strategiesnamely, theways in which stakeholders rationalize and contest particular representationsof Israel. These theoretical concerns within Critical Discourse Analysisare crucial for understanding how institutionalized representations, suchas those associated with Iran, can become popularized at the social level(Jaspal, 2013a).DATA COLLECTIONThis study focuses on two English-language Iranian news outlets, TheTehran Times and Press TV. The aim of the study was to provide a finegrained analysis of thediscursive aspects of media reporting on Israel, rather than to provide a longitudinal overview ofmedia reporting. The aimwas theoretical, focusing on how representations are constructed, disseminated,and encouraged, rather than purely empirical; moreover, a key aim ofthe study was to examine habitual ways of media reporting on Israel, ratherthan polarized coverage of particularly contentious events (e.g., LebanonWar; Gaza War).It was decided that a relatively small and well-circumscribed corpus ofarticles published during a short space of time would be adequate for fulfillingthis research aim. The websites of both outlets feature an onlinedatabase of published articles, all of which are available in PDF format.Using the keywords Israel, Zionist, and Palestine, the author conducteda search of the online databases for articles published between May1, 2011, and September 1, 2011. The 214 articles published during thisfour-month period contained one or more of these keywords and wereincluded in the output; all of these articles were subjected to Critical DiscourseAnalysis.It had been deemed appropriate to target a time period in which therewere no reports of major social or political events concerning Israel/theIsraeli-Arab conflict. Although there are frequent skirmishes between theIsraeli army and Palestinian militants as well as rocket attacks from Gaza,which often feature in international news coverage (Philo & Berry, 2004),this four-month period was in fact relatively uneventful.In reading the articles, the left margin was used to code emergingtheme titles, which captured the essential qualities of the articles. Theseinitial codes included inter alia, for the general tone of the article, categorization(e.g., regime), positioning (e.g., victimhood versus perpetrator),particular forms of language (e.g., metaphor), and emerging patterns withinthe data. Subsequently, the right margin was used to collate these initialcodes into potential discursive themes, which captured the essential qualitiesof the articles analyzed. The themes were reviewed rigorously against

article extracts that were considered vivid, compelling, and representative

of the discursive themes were selected for presentation in this paper, andappear below; the sources of the extracts are given in the footnotes. Finally,three superordinate discursive themes representing the results were developedand ordered into a logical and coherent narrative structure. Relevantconstructs from Social Representations Theory (e.g., anchoring/objectification) were drawn upon asa means of theoretically enriching the analysis.RESULTSThe analysis discusses the following three themes: (a) problematizingIsraels right to exist; (b)unveiling the global Zionist conspiracy; and (c) leading global anti-Zionismthe declining Zionistregime.Israels Right to ExistIran actively contests and undermines the legitimacy of the State of Israel. Articles in the corpusreproduce this political agenda by contesting the social representation that Israel is a Jewish state:1. Benyamin Netanyahus government is facing serious conflicts within the occupied territories as aresult of his insistence on the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state . . . However, there are seriousdisagreements about the definitions of the word Jew and the expressionJewish state inside Israel . . . Despite this high level of disagreement, Netanyahu is still adamantabout Israel being recognized as aJewish state.3When Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion declared the State of Israel in1948, he explicitly referred to it as a Jewish State (Ben-Gurion, 1948), andindeed the Basic Laws of Israel continue to define the state as a Jewish andDemocratic State.4 Pro-Palestinian proponents of the one-state solutiontend to contest the Jewish character of the territory, which they view asbeing occupied by Israel, and instead regard it as Palestine (see Shahvar,2009). Similarly, in extract 1, there is clear contestation of the notion thatIsrael should be recognized as a Jewish state. It attributes the serious conflicts within the occupiedterritories, which could refer to either the WestBank/Gaza or present-day Israel, to this insistence upon being recognizedas a Jewish state. Thus, the very existence of the Jewish state is constructedas the root cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, implicitly suggestingthat the conflict would cease to exist if the Jewish state were dismantled.The representation is further challenged by constructing the terms Jewand Jewish state as contentious and devoid of consensual interpretation.By contesting the meanings of these terms, the extract denigrates the claimthat Israel can possibly constitute a Jewish state, which itself is problematizedthrough its positioning in quotes. The representation that there is a high level of disagreement isinvoked in order to construct Netanyahusinsistence on the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state as inappropriateand perplexing.While contesting the social representation that Israel is a Jewish state,articles in the corpus conversely represent Palestine as indivisible andthereby advocate the destruction of Israel:2. Ayatollah Khamenei [Supreme Leader of Iran] said, Our declarationis the freedom of Palestine not the freedom of parts of Palestine.53. Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi says Iran believes Palestinecannot be partitioned and Palestinians are entitled to the entirety of thePalestinian territories.6In both extracts 2 and 3, there is an explicit rejection of the two-state

the existence of the State of Israel is not acknowledged, which essentiallyobscures six decades of Israeli independence (Jaspal, in press). Conversely,the articles employ the toponym Palestine in order to construct it as thelegitimate state vis-`a-vis the allegedly illegitimate State of Israel. Furthermore, by constructing thePalestinians as being entitled to the entirety of the Palestinian territories rather than to parts ofPalestine, these articlesrepresent the two-state solution to the conflict as unjust and illegitimate; infact, it depicts the existence of Israel as a violation of Palestinian rights.Thus, the rhetorical silencing of the State of Israel in these articles vis-`avisthe accentuation and legitimization of Palestine convincingly conteststhe two-state solution and thereby advocates the dismantlement of Israel.Consistent with this ideological stance, articles rarely refer to the Stateof Israel by this term but rather construct it in terms of an illegitimateregime:4. This action [the interception of a Gaza-bound ship by the Israelinavy] . . . is a political ignominy on the record of the fake Zionistregime, Larijani [speaker of the Iranian Parliament] said.75. The illegitimate Zionist Regime of Israel has stained its hands withmillions of innocent blood [sic ] . . . The holy land witnessed a greatdeal of injustice and bloodshed at the hands of their occupiers In both extracts 4 and 5, Israel isreferred to by the term Zionistregime, which contributes to the social representation that Israel is an inanimate, inhumane,authoritarian regime rather than a legitimate state (Jaspal,2013b). In extract 4, this socialrepresentation is further accentuated bycharacterizing the regime as a fake one, rather than as a democraticallyelected government by the people of Israel. It is noteworthy that articles inthe corpus rarely acknowledge the people of Israel but instead construct itas an illegitimate military regime. Its characterization as a fake regimeovertly delegitimizes Israel, implicitly constructing Palestine as the legitimatestate in the territory occupied by the Zionist regime. Similarly,extract 5 anchors the illegitimate Zionist regime, which itself connotes aninanimate, inhumane, authoritarian regime, to the bloodshed of millions.The article is vague in specifying the identities and numbers of victims,but is nonetheless successful in constructing the Zionist regime asboth illegitimate and responsible for mass genocide. The attribution of evilcharacteristics to Israel results in its delegitimization (Bar-Tal, 1990).Iran achieves its aim of delegitimizing Israel by anchoring it to socialrepresentations of colonialism in political rhetoric. This is particularly evidentin the Friday sermons delivered by the upper echelons of the theocraticpolitical establishment (Shahvar, 2009). Similarly, in the corpus, the inhabitantsof Israel are represented as (Zionist) colonizers or occupiers:6. Some American journalists said that these Zionists who come from allover the world should go back to their origins and not stay inPalestine.9As noted above, articles in the corpus rarely acknowledge the inhabitantsor citizens of Israel. When they are implicitly acknowledged, as inextract 6, they are anchored to the political ideology of Zionism, which inturn constructs their presence in Palestine as a colonial occupation. Thisextract delegitimizes these Zionists by representing them as a foreignpresence in Palestine from all over the worldthat is, they are notindigenous to Palestine and hence have no right to be there. Extract 1attests to the emerging social representation that the notion of a Jewish

by delegitimizing any Jewish claim to Israel in the first placethe

historical Jewish connection to Israel is simply not acknowledged(Webman, 2010). Conversely, Israelis are constructed as individuals fromall over the world who should go back to their origins. Crucially, theirJewish origins are not deemed to constitute sufficient cause for settlementin Israel. It is noteworthy that, by naming the territory Palestine andresisting social representations of Israeli statehood, articles in the corpus areable to delegitimize Israel rhetorically.In addition to denying any Jewish connection to Israel, there is a misrepresentation of thedemographic distribution of Israel, which serves torhetorically racialize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further delegitimizethe Jewish State:7. How could the Palestinians be called terrorists in their own land whenthey are fighting a foreign occupation by some Ashkenazi ZionistJews from Europe?10As in extract 6, the presence of Jews in Israel is represented in extract7 as a foreign occupation. Here, the origins of these occupiers are saidto be Ashkenazi and from Europe. This statement is erroneous, giventhat approximately 45 percent of Israelis are in fact of (non-European)Mizrahi or Sephardic background (Smooha, 2004). Its invocation here,however, contributes to the social representation that Israel constitutes anillegitimate, racist occupation of Palestine, due to the implicit anchoring ofIsraeli occupation to historical European colonial policies. There is animplicit racialization of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by referring to it asone between Palestinians, the legitimate inhabitants of Palestine, and(White) Ashkenazi Zionist Jews from Europe. Race is strategicallydeployed to further divide and delineate the inhabitants of Israel (see Richardson, 2004, for anexample of how the press deploys the construct ofrace in relation to Islam). It is against this backdrop of constructed occupation that the articleimplicitly rationalizes Palestinian attacks (againstcivilians) in Israel. Extract 7 contests the social representation that Palestinianperpetrators of attacks against civilians are terrorists by constructingthem as fighting a foreign occupation . . . in their own land. This reflectsthe common terrorist versus freedom fighter dichotomy in political discourse(Halmari, 1993). Thus, the delegitimization of Israel (as an occupation)is employed in order to legitimize all forms of Palestinian violenceagainst Israelis, including extreme genocidal measures:8. We advise them [the Zionists] to return to their countries as soon aspossible if they want to survive, Naqdi [Basij commander] said.11The rhetorical technique of disseminating a social representationthrough the quotation of a socially powerful source has been referred toas strategic quoting (Jaspal, 2011). Similarly, extract 8 strategically quotesthe commander of the Iranian Basij organization, which is a volunteerparamilitary organization established by the Supreme Leader in 1979(Abrahamian, 2008). Like extracts 6 and 7, extract 8 constructs the Jewishinhabitants of Israel as Zionist foreigners and suggests that they return totheir countries as soon as possible; Palestine is not their country but ratherthat of the Palestinians. Furthermore, the commander is strategically quotedas constructing the survival of the Zionists (that is, the Jewish inhabitants ofIsrael) as conditional upon their departure from Palestine. As demonstratedby extract 7, articles in the corpus rationalize Palestinian violence againstIsraelis as legitimate action against an illegitimate Zionist regime. Extract

delegitimization of the State of Israel culminates in implicit threats of genocide against the people ofIsrael.The Global Zionist ConspiracyGiven that Israel is constructed as a fake and illegitimate regime,it is frequently stated that its existence is supported by a global Zionistconspiracy. This social representation is further buttressed by the notionthat Israel (the objectification of this global Zionist conspiracy) attempts toexert its influence over the internal affairs of Arab and Muslim countries:9. Irans ambassador to Syria has said that Israel is meddling in Syria inan attempt to make up for the collapse of its close allies in theregion.1210. The global Zionism wants to target other countries after overthrowingthe Syrian government.13In extract 9, Israel is represented as meddling in the affairs of Syria,which, at the time this statement was made, was experiencing violent internalunrest, due to widespread popular opposition to almost five decades ofBaath Party rule led by the Al-Assad family (Lesch, 2011). Iran regardsSyria as a close ally and is therefore opposed to regime change in that country,although it has supported regime change in several other countriesinvolved in the so-called Arab Spring (Bauer & Schiller, 2012); indeed, a sizable number ofarticles in the corpus expressed their unequivocal supportof the Al-Assad government.14 Consequently, political unrest in Syria isattributed to Israeli meddling, rather than to the political aspirations of theSyrian people. It is anchored to an illegitimate state, rendering the conflicta product of global Zionism rather than of popular dissatisfactionwith the Syrian political system. More specifically, the unrest is constructedin terms of a malicious plot by Israel in order to make up for the collapseof its close allies, which is referring to the fall of ex-president HosniMobarak in Egypt. Extract 10 explicitly refers to global Zionism as plottingto overthrow the Syrian government. Moreover, the extract constructsglobal Zionism as an active global threat by attributing agency toits allegedly ubiquitous ideologythat is, it wants to target other countries.Thus, the world is represented as an unsafe place, one that is susceptibleto the unrest currently unfolding in Syria so long as global Zionism,objectified by the State of Israel, survives.As demonstrated by extracts 9 and 10, the English-language Iranianpress reiterates the social representation that the Zionist regime poses athreat to Iran, Muslims, and the world as a whole (Litvak, 2006). Iran isrepresented as actively unveiling the global Zionist conspiracy:11. Fortunately, all efforts and plots by the U.S. and the Zionist regimehave failed and the resistance movement is in a good situation in theregion. Iran has played an important role in foiling these conspiracies,Lahoud [former Lebanese president] told Irans ambassador toBeirut.1512. The move [to hold an international conference in support of Palestiniansrights] has greatly helped thwart the U.S. and Israel plotsaimed at creating friction among regional countries.16In both extracts, the Zionist regime is implicated, alongside theUnited States, in creating friction among regional countries. These aredescribed as plots that evoke imagery of a malevolent conspiracy. Of

president is strategically quoted to this effect. This distances the statements

not as from Iranian sources but instead from an apparently objective thirdparty, namely the former Lebanese president. Similarly, in extract 12, Iransdecision to host an international conference in support of Palestiniansrights is said to thwart US and Israeli plots, although the article itselfdoes not explain how. This further accentuates the role of Iran in mitigatingthe so-called global Zionist conspiracy.Throughout the corpus, there is a clear emphasis of the global characterof the Zionist conspiracy. Powerful Western countries, such as Britainand the United States, are represented as being dependent on the Zionistlobby:13. Britain bows to Zionist lobbies. The British government seems to berisking its independence from Zionist lobbies after its recent movesto protect Israeli war crimes suspects from prosecution and boycott aUN anti-racism conference that could lead to the condemnation ofthe regime.17In extract 13, Britain is said to be subservient to Zionist lobbies. Themetaphor of bow[ing] represents the Zionist lobbies in regal terms as aruler. More specifically, the British governments subservience to Zionismis exemplified by its decisions to: (a) withdraw from the UN antiracismconference, which was regarded by several countries as in fact constitutingan attack against the State of Israel (Baum, 2012); and (b) amendlegislation that could permit the arrest of former Israeli minister of foreignaffairs Tzipi Livni for war crimes. These controversial decisions, as wellas Britains alleged refusal to condemn the Israeli regime, are presentedas evidence for Britains subservience to Zionist lobbies. The extractproblematizes the sovereignty of Britain over its internal affairs and politicsby highlighting that it is risking its independence from Zionist lobbies.thereby representing it as dependent upon Zionism and not truly an independent,sovereign state.Similarly, articles in the corpus represent the United States as dependentupon Zionism:14. US deeply dependent on Zionist lobby1815. Israel reigns over US polity . . . It is very clear that news media isquite complacent in this whole situation that is going on with theinternational bankers and with the Zionist lobby, the very peoplewho control American domestic and foreign policyIn these extracts, Zionism is said to be in control of US polity. Inextract 15, the metaphor of reign[ing] represents Israel (the objectificationof global Zionism) in regal terms, as is seen in extract 13. Key institutionsin the United States, such as the media and the banking sector, are representedas being quite complacent in the Zionist lobbys alleged control ofUS polity. Moreover, the Zionist lobby is said to control Americandomestic and foreign policy and that the United States is deeply dependenton Zionism. Collectively, these assertions attest to the social representationthat there is a global Zionist conspiracy extending well beyond thegeographical boundaries of Israel. This social representation is reproducedin order to explicate implicitly the allegedly pro-Israeli decisions taken byboth the United States and UK governments, as exemplified by extract 13.While extracts 13, 14, and 15 disseminate social representations of globalZionist control of world governments, they are reminiscent of longstandingantisemitic social representations of Jewish world domination (Herf, 2006;

American political scene that highlighted social representational conflationof Zionist and Jewish conspiracies:16. The only visible reason that I can see in the American political sceneis the unequivocal control of the one percent of the population,namely the Zionist Jews (mostly with dual citizenship) in the US,who control the key echelons of power (media, banks and politicians)in the US.2017. Dankof [Mark Dankof, former US Senate candidate]: There is anissue here that involves Jewish control of the news media, Jewishcontrol of the American political process, disproportionate Jewishcontrol of the international banking system . . . and an Israel-drivenAmerican foreign policy21The extracts reproduce antisemitic social representations of Jewishworld domination, which were pervasive during the Nazi era and particularlyobservable in notorious antisemitic Nazi propaganda (see Herf, 2006).Extract 16 represents the Jewish population of the United States as Zionists,essentially conflating the two constructs and portraying them as intertwined.The extract features the rhetorical strategy of overcompleteness/irrelevance by providing subordinate, yet superfluous, information of littlerelevance to the report itself, in order to confirm and contribute to negativesocial representations of the stigmatized Jewish Other (van Dijk, 1993).More specifically, it is noted that Zionist Jews in the United Statesmostly have dual citizenshipit is implied that they are simultaneouslycitizens of the United States and Israel. This engenders imagery of a splitnational loyalty of Zionist Jews, who in fact favor the interests of globalZionism. The disproportionate control of the Jews is further accentuatedby highlighting that they constitute just one percent of the population, yettheir control of US politics is unequivocal, i.e., commonsensical, ratherthan alleged. This serves to hegemonize the social representation that Jewscontrol the key echelons of power in the United States.Both extracts 16 and 17 construct Jews as possessing disproportionateinstitutional control that is subsequently abused in order to promote theagenda of global Zionism, resulting in an Israel-driven American foreignpolicy. There is an overarching allegation of corruption, as Jews are said tocontrol media, banks and politiciansnot just to influence but to control.Mark Dankof, who is a former US Senate candidate, is strategically quotedas highlighting Jewish control of key US institutions. This can appear tolend the statement a thin veil of credibility, since the speaker is a US Senatecandidate and the United States is regarded by Iran as constituting the closestally of Israel.22 Furthermore, the technique of strategic quoting mayserve to distance these clearly antisemitic remarks from Iran, and constructthe Iranian-owned outlet as merely showcasing the remarks of a crediblesource. This constitutes an important rhetorical strategy, given that Iran(and indeed, its media) has been accused of antisemitismwhich it denies,claiming that it is anti-Zionist, not antisemitic (Jaspal, 2013a; Litvak, 2006).In short, articles in the corpus seem to draw upon longstandingantisemitic social representations of Jewish world domination in order tosubstantiate polemic representations concerning the global Zionist conspiracy.In many cases, the representations themselves remain the sametheonly apparent difference is the superficial categorical shift from Jew toZionist. As exemplified by extracts 16 and 17, antisemitism does remaina feature of Iranian media representations of Israel.

conspiracy, articles in the corpus represent Iran as valiantly leading this

global resistance movement against the Zionist regime:18. Iran sees any act against Hezbollah, Hamas as a threat to its interests. . . The worlds people should know that today the positions ofHezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine are considered asIrans border with Israel23In extract 18, the Lebanese Shiite Muslim movement Hezbollah andthe Palestinian Islamist organization Hamas are constructed as being theproteges of Iran, which in turn sees any act against these organizations asa threat to its interests. Given that these organizations are pervasivelyrepresented as constituting the Islamic resistance against the Zionistregime (Takeyh, 2006), Iran as their prime supporter is elevated to a positionof leadership in the anti-Zionist struggle. The article proceeds todefine the Hamas and Hezbollah positions as Irans border withIsrael, essentially obscuring national boundaries that delineate Iran, Lebanon,and the Palestinian territories. This is consistent with the observationthat the Israeli-Arab conflict is frequently Islamicized by Iran and representedas one between the Zionist regime and the global Islamic Ummah(Jaspal, in press; Litvak, 1998). Despite never having engaged in an armedconflict with the State of Israel, Iran is represented as a primary stakeholderin the conflict and as leading the resistance movement more commonlyassociated with Hezbollah and Hamas.Similarly, articles in the corpus represent Iran as leading the ideologicaldimension of the resistance movement by organizing the allegedlywell-attended International Conference on the Palestinian Intifada, forexample:19. Iran intifada confab to host 70 states. 70 countries are attending24Here, a conference is described as being the Irans intifada confab,highlighting the centrality of Iran in its organization. The extract depictsIran as leading an increasingly global anti-Zionism, which is implied by thelarge number of countries attending the conference. This seems to be consistentwith the notion that Iran, and its channels of societal information, areeager to construct their anti-Zionist stance as a global and ubiquitous one,shared by many other countries, in order to safeguard a sense of acceptanceand inclusion in the international community (Jaspal, 2013a).This sense of self-inclusion and leadership in a global anti-Zionism,which is largely ideological, is juxtaposed with more aggressive social representationsof Irans role in defeating the Zionist regime:20. Ayatollah Mahdavi Kani said that Iranian nation has isolated theZionist regime in the international arena and tightened the noosearound it.25According to articles in the corpus, anti-Zionist events such as theInternational Conference on the Palestinian Intifada and International QudsDay, which express solidarity with the Palestinian people and rejects Zionism,exemplify how the Iranian nation has isolated the Zionist regime inthe international arena. Extract 20 clearly attributes the isolation of theZionist regime to the efforts of Iran. This is constructed as a strugglebetween the people of Iran and an inanimate, inhumane, and militarizedZionist regime, which further popularizes anti-Zionism, distancing itfrom the confines of Irans political establishment.Articles in the corpus actively encourage the social representation thatthe entire world, not only the Arab world, is becoming increasingly opposed

many other countries of the world and Israel has more enemies thanit had sixty years back [sic ], for example its neighbor Egypt whichwas an ally till yesterday is now a sworn enemy of the Zionistregime.2622. Governments that allow Zionist embassies to be set up must be reprimand[sic ].27Extract 21 constructs Palestine as a widely supported state, particularlyby its Arab neighbors, while Israel is depicted as gradually losing theallegedly little support it originally had. The extract erroneously highlightsthat Israel has more enemies than it had sixty years back [sic] and proceedsto cite Egypt as a sworn enemy of the Zionist regime. It is noteworthythat sixty years ago neither Jordan nor Egypt had diplomatic relationswith the State of Israel, but, at the time this article was written, these countrieshad established such relations. It seems that the article is makingimplicit reference to the popular storming of the Israeli embassy in Cairo inSeptember 2011,28 an act employed to argue that Egypt is now a swornenemy. The provision of inaccurate information is clearly intended toaccentuate the Iranian-driven anti-Zionist agenda by demonstrating that anti-Zionism is increasinglypervasive, even in Egypt. In addition to theconstruction of a pervasive global anti-Zionism, articles in the corpus constructany implicit support for Zionism as reproachable, as exemplified byextract 22. This is consistent with the observation that any support forIsrael, in whatever guise, is constructed as un-Islamic (Jaspal, in press;Litvak, 1998).The anti-Zionist stance of Iran is optimistically represented as successfulin its goal to eradicate the Zionist regime :23. Some governments proposed the historical tactic of the formation ofa Palestinian government in order to buy time for saving the Zionistregime [of Israel], [Iranian] President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said.But this tactic will not be able to save Israel . . . The Middle Eastregion will not integrate the unseemly patch that is the Zionistregime [of Israel] and will reject it29In extract 23, the strategic quote from President MahmoudAhmadinejad represents the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinianconflict as a historical tactic of some [presumably Western] governments,rather than as the stated policy of the Palestinian Authority (Parsons,2005). The Palestinian statehood bid (based on the pre-1967 borders),which was in fact initiated by the Palestinian Authority and opposed by theUnited States, is thereby represented as part of this historical tactic. Byattributing the tactic to these governments and distancing it from the PalestinianAuthority, the internationally recognized representative of the Palestinianpeople, the extract represents it as a malicious attempt to buy timefor saving the Zionist regime. Israel is optimistically represented as beingin danger of extinction beyond recourse. This is attributed to the hypothesisthat the Middle East will reject Israel, whose existence is represented asconditional upon integration in the Middle East. The metaphorical objectificationof Israel as an unseemly patch and regime represents it as ananomaly in the Middle East, further reiterating the hypothesis of its imminentdemise. It stresses that the collective rejection of Israel is said to leadto its demise:24. Today, the Zionist regime is at its weakest in history. Therefore, theWest including the United States and Europe are offering various

added.3025. He [Parliament speaker Ali Larijani] added, Now that the groundhas been prepared for defending the oppressed Palestinian nation, theZionist regime is suffering horrendous hallucinations about its existence,so is even scared of its own shadow.31Extract 24 reiterates the social representation articulated in extract 23that the West (e.g., the United States and Europe) is devising plans inorder to protect the Zionist regime, which here is described as a fakeregime. This contributes to the delegitimization of Israel, following theprevious discussion. Secretary Sheikholeslam is strategically quoted as optimisticallypositioning the Zionist regime . . . at its weakest in history,which creates the impression that Iranian-led global anti-Zionism is havingits intended effect. Similarly, in extract 25 the Zionist regime is metaphoricallydepicted as suffering horrendous hallucinations about itsexistence. This creates the impression that Israel as well is acquiringawareness of its weak position and imminent demise, engenderingextreme panic and fear within the regime. This characterization is furtheraccentuated through the metaphorical objectification of Israel being scaredof its own shadow; similarly, in some articles, this fear has been cited asan explanation for Israels alleged engagement in terrorism against Iran.32Extract 25 thus juxtaposes the fear of the Zionist regime and its imminentdemise with the Iran-led duty of defending the oppressed Palestiniannation. In short, Iran is represented as being successful and efficacious inits longstanding commitment to defending the Palestiniansthat is, byadvocating a fervent anti-Zionist ideology and exporting it beyond the bordersof Iran.DISCUSSIONThis paper provides an analysis of two English-language Iranian newsoutlets in order to discern how Iran exports its anti-Zionist ideology to aninternational readership. It in no way aims to provide a comprehensiveoverview of the English-language Iranian press but rather has the theoreticalaim of developing a tentative model outlining the discursive aspects ofthe delegitimization process in textual representations of Israel. This textualfocus complements Bar-Tals (1990) work on the micro-level aspects ofdelegitimization and its causes and consequences.Consistent with previous research into Irans position on Israel, theseoutlets are unanimous in their negative portrayal of Israel, e.g., as a corruptand illegitimate regime (Jaspal, 2013b; Klein, 2009). It is noteworthy thatthese media outlets provide greater voice to members of the Iranian politicoreligious establishment than to Western politicians. Consistent with theassertion that the outlets constitute the mouthpiece of Iran, they provide anEnglish-language journalistic space for the dissemination of ideas and argumentsassociated with Irans politico-religious elite, which would habituallybe afforded minimal space in the mainstream Western press. This is consistentwith the aim of these outlets to provide an alternative news outlet.Collectively, the results of the analysis point to a rhetorical delegitimizationprocess, which consists of three interdependent components: (a)contesting the legitimacy of the targeted outgroup entity; (b) describing themalevolent processes whereby the outgroup entity was established and iscurrently maintained; and (c) problem-solving by demanding the destructionof the outgroup entity.

The first component of the delegitimization process entails the notionof Israels right to exist. This component can be manifested in the guise ofquestioning the Jewish character of Israel, given that Israel presents itselfand is widely regarded as the Jewish State (Gilbert, 1998). Furthermore,there is widespread disdain of Israel through the use of discrediting termssuch as regime, fake, and illegitimate. When Israeli citizens are mentioned,they are denounced as foreigners and occupiers because of non-Palestinianorigins. Such labeling reflects Bar-Tals notion of trait characterizationi.e., the attribution of negative characteristics to the outgroup and their consequential otherization.The inverted social representation of Israeli citizensas foreigners/occupiers is consistently employedin order to rationalize violence(Bar-Tal, 1990).The second component of the delegitimization process entails the constructionof social representations regarding Israel origins. A vast number ofarticles in the corpus reproduce the social representation of a global Zionistconspiracy, which continues to support it (Mottale, 2011). Israels allies,e.g., the United States, are portrayed as dependent on the Zionist lobby.Put simply, the world remains at the mercy of the Zionists. In the socialrepresentations of a global Zionist conspiracy, the category Jew hassuperficially shifted to Zionist in the English-language Iranian press, butthe core and structure of this delegitimizing social representation remain thesame: the Jewish Zionist is cunning, and poised for global takeover. Thesesocial representations collectively exemplify Bar-Tals notion of outcasting,in which the outgroup violates pivotal norms; global Zionism is furtherdemonized through anchoring to evil and objectification in terms of violentunrest. Not surprisingly, plot and meddling are frequently employedterms when actions of the Zionist are addressed.The third component of the delegitimization involves problem-solvinghow best to dispose of a fake and illegitimate enemy. Articles makethe case for stopping the Zionist regime in its tracks, preventing furtherPalestinian genocide, Iranian terrorism, and world domination. As Bar-Tal(1990) points out, it makes the outgroup unworthy of human treatment,invariably permitting subhuman treatment of the Zionist Other. Given themultiple threats posed by Zionism, anti-Zionism is the likely and logicalresponse. In the anti-Zionist narrative, Iran becomes a benevolent and braveleader who saves the day from the ever-growing web of anti-Zionism. Articlesare replete with death imagery and describe a fearful and witheringZionist regime.LINKING IDENTITY, EMOTION, AND ACTIONDrawing upon Identity Process Theory (Breakwell, 1986), social psychologists have argued thatmedia representational practices (concerningthe ingroup vis-`a-vis outgroups) can reflect broader social psychologicalmotives (Jaspal & Cinnirella, 2010). More specifically, media outlets maystrategically represent the outgroup in ways that provide the ingroup withcollective feelings of self-esteem, meaning, belonging, and self-efficacy.Similarly, it can be hypothesized that Iran intentionally disseminates representationsthat enhance its own identity.Delegitimizing Israeli social representations enhances Iranian nationalself-esteem (Wills, 1981). As the antithesis of Israel, Iranian superiorityprevails (Jaspal, 2013a). The external attribution of both domestic and internationalproblems, such as the Arab Spring, to Israeli malfeasance enhancesnational meaning-making (McAdams, 2001).Demonizing Israel may promote acceptance in the larger Sunni Muslim

sectarian divisions (Takeyh, 2006). The social representation of Iran

as the leading force in thwarting anti-Zionism via Israels demise accentuatesnational feelings of competence, control, and self-efficacy. Invariably,these representational practices of the media can have only positive socialpsychological outcomes for Iran.Iran is eager to normalize these representational practices, which areclearly beneficial for its own continuity and well-being. This necessitates asocially acceptable means of disseminating its extreme anti-Zionist agendato an international readership. The news outlets perform this function bydelegitimizing Israel and thereby depriving it and its citizens of humannessand the ability to evoke empathy and compassion (Kelman, 1976). Iraniananti-Zionist ideology is endowed with a thin, superficial veil of acceptabilityby drawing upon historical social representations that construct Israel asan inhumane regime that oppresses and threatens, and as the product of aglobal Zionist/Jewish conspiracy that mercilessly controls the world.Such delegitimizing social representations are intended to arouse negativeemotions of rejection, such as hatred, anger, fear, and disgust, justifyingviolence and genocide against the delegitimized target (Bar-Tal, 1990).By reproducing these delegitimizing representations in the English-languagepress, Iran continues to export anti-Zionist ideology to an internationalreadership, evoking global sympathy and calls for the destruction ofthe Jewish State.*Rusi Jaspal is a chartered psychologist and lecturer in psychology at De MontfortUniversity (Leicester, UK), where he leads the Self and Identity Research Group.Dr. Jaspal has written several articles on antisemitism and is currently completingthe monograph Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism: Representation, Cognition andEveryday Talk (Ashgate, forthcoming).

Head-On (Collision) at Hebdo

Nidra Poller*Clash of civilizations, star wars, the big bang, a certain idea of France was murdered in coldthblood on January 7 . An allahu akhbar commando stormed into the offices of Charlie Hebdo,executed twelve people, wounded another twenty; four of them critically. It is painfully difficultto sort out nuggets of accurate information from the sound and fury that fills the airwaves and thestreets of Paris. [12 noon, one minute of silence has been decreed by the government, outside mywindow I hear car horns furious at someone blocking the street, rumbling machines working on anearby building, almostdrowning out the dirge sounded by the church bell on the corner, icy rain pelts on hurriedpassersby].An infinitesimal minority of the 5 or 6 million Muslims living in France--two brothersidentified as Sherif and Said Kouachi wiped out the staff of an in your face magazine that hasbeen offending everyone for 45 years. A mixture of pornography and scatology was served upweekly in a hallmark sloppy cartoon style with brief texts that lashed out like a not yetemancipated adolescent at chosen targets. The sweet smiling faces of yesterdays victims Charb,Cabu, Tignous, Wolinski, Honor, Maris convey the abiding innocence that was brutallyassassinated. They made good-natured grotesque fun of everyone including themselvesin aheretofore protected world.In 2005, Charlie published the Mohamed cartoons with the same insolence as it habituallyemployed on priests, rabbis and other benighted believers. Courageous, yesbut also blinded bytheir own enlightened tolerance. On this and subsequent occasions the Charlies reiterated theirfaith in humanity, Muslims included. Mocking fanatics was a gesture of affection for fellowcitizens of the Muslim faith. The mockery was inclusive, not aggressive. It was a way of saying

published, cannot hold back his tears. Ive lost all my friends. Valls gives credit to Frenchgovernments Left and Right that protected him and his staff since that fateful day. Withoutpolice protection we would not have been able to carry on. Though Charlie Hebdo wasacquitted of defamation in 2006, the court established de facto anti- blasphemy by granting themagazine a limited right to offend Islam in the context of the worldwide controversy surroundingthe Mohamed cartoons. Dalil Boubaker, rector of the Central Mosque of Paris, one of theplaintiffs in that case, was represented by Francis

Szpiner, who also represented France 2 in the case against Philippe Karsenty and, subsequently,the family of Ilan Halimi against the Gang of Barbarians.At the time, Boubaker voiced disapproval of the violence ripping through the Muslim worldover the cartoons, while pleading for respect for Islam and the prophet. Yesterday he rushed tothe site of the killings and voiced his disapproval of an act that sullies Islam and betrays itssacred respect for human life. If the Charlie Hebdo massacre is Frances 9/11 as many suggest,the religion of peace message that so quickly replaced dont tread on me in the US is even moreinsistent here in France.The usual array of experts, specialists, authors, former secret service agents and well-trainedjournalists is making the distinction between Islam and these allahu akhbar fanatics. The bodiesof the victims were still lying in pools of blood in their boardroom while the concern had alreadyshifted to the innocent Muslims who might be fingered because of this aberrant misuse of theirbeautiful religion.Spontaneous demonstrations formed all over France, 100,000 in all, with 35,000 at Place dela Rpublique. The Je suis Charlie [I am Charlie] slogan caught on instantly worldwide.Sincerely moved, often to tears, honest citizens stood in the frosty cold, holding up pencils as asign of rsistance. We Are Not Afraid they declared in a little light show Place de la Rpublique.Memorial candle burners occupied the field conquered last summer by flag burners, the blackmournful mockup of a Charlie Hebdo front page replaced the black flag of jihad flown lastAugust, a tribute was made to two policemen killed in the line of duty yesterday, there where thecaliphators had attacked police with rocks and bags of broken glass.[2:30 PMit is reported that the two suspects robbed a gas station, abandoned the car theyhijacked on the run yesterday, and are somewhere in a zone between Villers- Cotterts andCrpy-en-Valois. Commandos in Puma helicopters are circling over the area, under the watchfuleye of TV cameras. The bucolic place names have all the perfumes of an eternal France that isslashed today by the intrusion of another world it still refuses to see.]In 2008 a different sort of scandal targeted Charlie Hebdo: editorial director Philippe Vallswas accused in some quarters of censorship for kicking out the unashamed anti-Semite Sin. Inmy coverage of that story-- Tempest in a Trashcan -- I noticed an element that had escaped othercommentators: an article by Charb making fun of those who claim the al Dura video is a hoax,and relaying the bit about Israelis killing Palestinian children wholesale.The firebombing of Charlies offices in 2011 raised a first ripple of public indignation.Defiant, the staff brought out a CHARIA HEBDO issue, under the direction of editor in chiefMohammed. On the next to the last page of that issue, chock full of scandalous acts, positions,and nudity on the theme of sharia, a full-page interview with David Chemla, president of theFrench branch of Peace Now and European secretary of the J Street lookalike JCall. The releaseof 1,000 prisoners in exchange for Gilad Shalit, including 280 responsible for the death of 600civilians shows, says Chemla, that Israel can erase its red lines for a good cause. They will haveto do some more erasing, he advises, in order to make peace with the Palestinians. [My coverage:Auto da fe in ParisIn a video filmed before a mountain of charred documents, Charb admitted that he mightneed police protection from now on. But he said he had more chance of getting run over by aVel-lib (municipal rental bike) than to be killed by an Islamist there are so

few in France.thThe November 9 issue featured on its cover a cute little Charlie kid receiving adrooling kiss from a sweet bearded guy in Salafist dress. Love is stronger than hatred,proclaims the cover. The issue is filled with testimonials from all over the world, and strongwith a spirit of we will not be cowed. In his personal account of the aftermath of the fire, Charbhas a thought for the Muslims who are the first victims of this fire. Its going to be exploitedby the Far Right to discredit all Muslims. In fact, wrote Charb, we cant be sure the attack didcome from Islamists. Maybe it was fascist provocateurs! Anyway, the hacking and death threatscome from foreign Islamists.But the Kouachi brothers, of Algerian origin, were born in Paris!In January 2013 Charlie Hebdo brought out the first volume of an irreverent apologetic Lifeof Mohammed [LaVie de Mahomet] comic book illustrated by Charb. The prophet is portrayedwith comical awkwardness but his message and life story are told with orthodox respect.The philo-Muslim theme is endlessly repeated over the past 24 hours. Imams that swearallegiance to the values of the Republic are featured on TV. Those who preach jihad are notmentioned even in a whisper. The Muslim in the street is spotlighted, a caring citizen like anyother. A woman in hijab places flowers on the altar in front of the Charlie Hebdo offices. In replyto a journalist who asks Are you concerned? she offers a little homily: The prophet neverattacked unless he was attacked. Then he responded with kind words and only if they wereignored did he fight. When he fought, he really fought!thThe younger brother, Sherif Kouachi, was briefly imprisoned for his activity in the 19arrondissement terror cell that recruited jihadis for Iraq. At the time, journalist Mohamed Sifaoui,himself a refugee from the Algerian terror wave, declared that it was the American invasion ofIraq, not Islam that provoked the Buttes Chaumont terror cell.Today Sifaoui claims that rising xenophobia in France fuels Islamic radicalization, and we haveto deal with both. The BBC outdid everyone, bringing in the sly wily Muslim Brotherhood TariqRamadan to tell us infidels how we should behave to avoid this kind of attack.I24 news commentator Ali Waked candidly admitted that he had been in the midst of agroup not far from the stations Jaffa studios Monday night: The majority said Charlie Hebdohad insulted the prophet and got what was coming to them.Worldwide media showed an unprecedented mobilization in France. Undeniably, a nervehas been hit. There has been nothing like it since the first Islamic attacks going back to the 80sand increasing exponentially since October 2000. There was no public outcry last month whenthe I Tl channel dropped the popular debater Eric Zemmour, after publication of Le SuicideFranais, in which he expands on the Islamic problem facing France. Of course the issue ofpress freedom takes on immense significance when the staff of a magazine is decimated by twomen with Kalashnikovs. The reaction to the Charlie Hebdo massacre is neither artificial norhypocritical. But the question of Islam is an abyss. Unless it is faced honestly, fearlessly, withoutfalse reassurance, the masses of enlightened citizens standing up for their freedom today willslide into that chasm.

*Nidra Poller is an American writer who lives in Paris. Her latest book The Black Flag of Jihad stalks laRpublique is available via Amazon Dccember 2015.

I am Charlie. I am a police officer. I am a Jew. I am

Belgium.Jol Rubinfeld*I'm Charlie. I am a police officer. I am Jewish.Once again, terrorism has spilled the blood of innocent people in thestreets of a European capital. This time it was in Paris that Islamist barbarismtook issue with the symbols of democracy: journalists, police and the Jews,that is to say, freedom of expression, the guarantors of rule of law and themost exposed minority of our society.This totalitarianism that threatens us - and which, no doubt, will hitagain - is not his first attempt. It is this same hatred, the same absoluterejection of what we are, which struck last year a few miles from here, theBrussels Jewish Museum, but also in Australia, in a caf in Sydney center inIsrael in a synagogue in Jerusalem, at the headquarters of the CanadianParliament in Ottawa or even in Pakistan, in a school in Peshawar, where 132Muslim students were brutally murdered.(. . .) Today, it is one minute tomidnight.Soon there will be only one answer to the question posed by agrowing number of Jews in our country, our children do they still have afuture in Belgium? Soon, if nothing changes if nothing significant changes,there will be only one answer to this question from - also in Israel, the UnitedStates, Canada, Australia. That is to say the few places in the world where it isstill possible to be fully Jewish and citizen.But it is one minute to midnight I said, this is to say that anotheranswer is still possible. For "stay here" this is another answer, it is imperativethat political actors, media, associations, academic understand immediately, aseven the French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, Belgium without the Jews, itdoes is Belgium. For this, we must, like our French neighbors, making thefight against anti-Semitism a national cause.Make no mistake about it, what is at stake right now is not only thefate of the Jews Belgians. Because when you shout "Death to the Jews" in thestreets of Brussels, these are the slogans "Death to Belgium," "Death todemocracy", "Death to gender equality," "Death to tolerance "" Death todiversity, "" Death to integration "is meant. So the elected democratic parties

that have not yet realized that they need to fight this battle for our children, Iimplore them to carry it for their own.The contemporary anti-Semitism, it hurts, harasses, intimidates, killedin Toulouse, Brussels and Paris has replaced the Jewish state for the Jewishindividual under the guise of anti-Zionism. The fight against anti-Semitismcan not therefore do without a deep crop the Middle Eastern reality, arevolution in attitudes with, first and foremost, a verb revolution that finallystops the demonization of Israel and the insidious question surrender its rightto existence and legitimacy to embody the nation state of the Jewish people.It will also do a lot to inept fantasy that wants a solution to the conflictbetween Israel and the Palestinians is the cornerstone of peace and universalharmony. Here we must say things clearly: the Islamists do not hate the Westbecause of Israel, they hate Israel because it carries the values of the West.This revolution in mentality will then appoint the Jews targeted byterrorism in Europe and in Israel, as they are the victims and not as coresponsible for the disastrous fate meted out to them.This revolution in attitudes will also help ensure greater solidarity ofthe entire civil society in respect of his fellow citizens of the Jewish faith andperhaps so do does we will see almost cry when they are insulted Jews alone,humiliated, assaulted for simply being Jewish.Nothing, nothing will be done without this revolution in attitudes. Themost coercive security measures, the deployment of the wider security forceswherever Jews come together, pray or study will be only a plaster on awooden leg if, upstream, we do not decisively change our software ourreading grid on the war that Islamist terrorism told our civilization, whether inBrussels, Paris, New York, Madrid, London and Jerusalem.Dear friends, it is one minute to midnight, and I should like to make asolemn appeal to startle all our compatriots for my fellow Jews who celebratethe anniversary of their children to be assured that they will still be able to doit, here at home, in our country, in 1 year, in 5 years, in 50 years.I am the son of a Child hidden Austrian who fled Austria in 1939 totake refuge in Belgium. I am the son of a small-Polish Jew who fledpersecution in Poland to take refuge in Austria. I am the great-grand son of aRussian Jew who fled the pogroms in Russia to take refuge in Poland. I wantto believe that I was still possible to be 1 Rubinfeld to break with the traditionof the suitcase or the coffin, to be born, have lived, he was happy and proud tolive in my country, Belgium, and die a natural death there.I am Charlie. I am a police officer. I am Jewish. I am Belgian.*Belgian League against Anti-Semitism (LBCA) president Jol Rubinfeldspeech delivered at Maale synagogue January 14, 2015

=rhMI CORAZN ESPAOL

Mi Corazn Espaol(My Spanish Heart)

=h1Doreen

Carvajal's The Forgetting River:

A Modern Tale of Survival, Identity and theInquisition(Riverside Books, 2012). 321 pp. $20@=n1Dianne R. Layden*@Doreen Carvajals The Forgetting River is a compelling mixtureof a memoir and history, with the authors search for her family andidentity as Jews set against the backdrop of Spains and Europes wellworn antisemitism. The epigram asserts the power of forgetting: No,no, go not to Lethe from Keatss Ode to Melancholy. In Greekmythology, Lethe is a river in Hades, and the legend is that all whodrink from the river forget earthly life. Guadalete lies near Arcos de laFronteraa whitewashed village filled with Andalusian allure and oneof southern Spains most sought-after vacation destinations. Localtownsfolk maintain the charm, perhaps because they neveracknowledge, let alone speak of, the Jews hanged on Gallows Hillduring the Inquisition.Seasoned journalist Carvajal (The New York Times andInternational Herald Tribune) has written a book that is so compellingthat I deliberately slowed my reading in order to savor her words. Shecollected family letters and possessions, sifted through Arcos history,Inquisition and Church records; and interviewed residents, conversos

(crypto-Jews), and expertsone of whom implored the author to

Dont ask. Think.Spains war on its Jewish residents begins with the QueenIsabella and King Ferdinand Edict of Expulsion (1492) and the fourmonth order to evacuate without gold or silver. Those who left forPortugal won only temporary respite and were expelled from Portugalby 1496. Those who remained became subjected to more than 49,000heresy trials held between 1570 and 1700, including those who soughtrefuge in the New World (Mexico and Peru). It was not until 1968 thatthe Edict of Expulsion was formally revoked.For Carvajal, born in California and raised as a Catholic,forgetting the Inquisition is an injustice beyond the suffering inflictedby expulsion, forced conversions, and the torture and execution of thehundreds of thousands who refused. Notable too was the price paid byJews who converted to Catholicism but maintained some Jewishritualse.g., conversos. If discovered, the consequences ranged frompublic humiliation to public execution. Their descendants wouldexperience derision and identity conflicts centuries later.Employing a non-linear structure, Carvajal provides a leisurelydescription of her global search, which was spurred by peoplesquestions about whether she was related to the CarvajalsLuisRodriguez Carvajal and his sisters Isabel and Leonor, who were burnedat the stake in Mexico for secretly practicing Judaism. The authorexplains: The telltale evidence of Isabels crimes was the use of cleanbed linens and clothing on Friday evenings, signs to demonstrate theirobservance of the Sabbath. The inquisitors also took note of otherritualsfasting and dietary restrictions, the shunning of pork.Betrayed by friends, Luis was tortured and forced to name most ofhis immediate relatives, plus 116 others. He was executed in December1596 and ordered to pay trial and prison expenses, as torture was notconsidered punishment. Carvajals ancestors arrived in America fromCosta Rica. She writes, We were Catholics, but I suspected we wereactually Sephardic Jews whose identity was stolen, hidden, and lost forcenturies like a missing key. Or at least the clues pointed me in thatdirection because I had doubts. Doubt was my religion.The past was not a part of her sense of family, perhaps becausethe family migrated from other countries. The 2001 attacks on theWorld Trade Center intensified her yearning for a sense of belonging,a longing for home, to be whole. Revisiting Arcos several times since2003, its pueblo remained in Carvajals thoughts with a lingeringfantasy that by returning to live high on its yellow cliffs, I couldconfront the past and reclaim an identity. Her father traced the familyback to Spain, but provided no explanation for why they left. Sheequates her familys silence with silence as a survival tactic for

Andalusians who lived under brutal repression from dukes to dictators.

Asking her cousin Cecilia why the family forgot that they were Jews,Cecilia replied that they did not forget; rather, It was just a subjectthey avoided . . . Maybe they saved themselves. Cecilias mother,Carvajals great-aunt Luz, said their origins were from sefarditas,Sephardic Jews.

Arcos de la Frontera and the Guadalete River, Cdiz Province, Spain

Carvajal describes Arcosthe people, houses, streets, churches,

bells, rituals, Jewish remnants, and silence about the Inquisition. Shelonged to understand the hard experiences of people who hid in plainsight under the constant fear of treachery by neighborswhispers,surveillance, suspicious glances, and scent of betrayal in the air.While in Arcos, disturbing dreams and a sense of dread cameand went. She recalled viewing a procession of penitents during HolyWeek, and a sudden surge of emotions filled her: I studied the eyes ofthe penitents, which made me feel the pain of some primeval memorythat I couldnt explain . . . I wanted to rip away their hoods to see theireyes and the eyes of their ancestors.In my emails with the author, she wrote of her powerful reactionto the testimonies of Inquisition witnesses against her ancestors inSegovia for heresy and concealing their Jewish identity, whose dailycustoms were spied upon and reported by neighbors and friends. Shewrote: Something shifted inside me when I knew how hard they triedto preserve a part of their souls . . . By the end of her journey, she hadresolved her doubts.Caravals book is dense with detail about Jewish migration fromSpain to North Africa, Europe, the Ottoman Empire, and the Americas.There are illustrative and illuminating secondary reports: Pedro Acosta,who did not doff his hat passing a picture of Jesus (subsequentlycharged); Mallorca converso genetics, ritual similaritiese.g., HolyWeek chants (saetas) and Yom Kipper Kol Nidre; and crypto-Jewishartisans quietly recording their resistance onto Church iconography.The power of Carvajals work resides in this descendant ofJews passion for truth and her defiance in swimming against thecurrent of willful forgetting of the Guadalete River.

*Dianne R. Layden is a writer and retired college professor. Her research interestsinclude American studies, public violence, and New Mexican history and culture,including crypto-Judaic culture. She is a member of the New Mexico JewishHistorical Society and reviews books and films for the JSA.Postscript On November 22, 2012, Spain announced citizenship for those with Jewishancestors who fled the Inquisition. I can finally close the circle with my past, deepenmy ties to Spain, and learn more about Judaism and ultimately convert., saidDoreen.